Davidson Bangayan INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Wednesday said businessman Davidson Bangayan was not yet off the hook as the National Bureau of Investigation continues to insist that he is the alleged rice-smuggling king David Tan.
“Up to this very moment, the NBI is insisting that they (investigators) are more or less confident that they have the right guy. They said they are sufficiently convinced that this Davidson Bangayan who surfaced is really David Tan,” De Lima said.
Bangayan showed up at the Department of Justice on Tuesday and denied that he was the David Tan that persistent media reports have tagged as the king of rice smugglers.
Bangayan identified himself as a businessman from Manila engaged in metal scrap trading though he admitted to “dabbling” in the rice trade.
He was subsequently arrested by the NBI on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by a Caloocan City court against a “David Tan” who was charged with electricity pilferage.
The NBI was forced to release him, however, after Bangayan’s lawyer, Benito Salazar, argued he was not the same David Tan named in the search warrant.
Tan, not Bangayan
Elaborating Wednesday on the NBI decision to release Bangayan, De Lima said the arrest warrant was unusual because it specifically stated that the subject David Tan was not Bangayan.
“It’s only now that I saw such kind of an arrest warrant that clears [the suspect]. Instead of saying ‘alias’ or ‘also known as’ David Tan, what it says is ‘who is not David Tan,’” she said.
Of course, Bangayan’s lawyer would insist that the NBI had no reason to arrest him, De Lima said. “That’s his job, to fight for the interest of his client.”
She said NBI agents were sent to the Caloocan regional trial court that issued the warrant on Oct. 11, 2010, to go over the records of the case and find out why the judge made such a notation on the arrest warrant.
“Unfortunately, they were not allowed [to go over the records], allegedly because they are not parties to the case, that they are not real parties in interest,” she said.
De Lima said she intended to write to the court, questioning why law enforcers were not given access to the records when as officers of the law they had the duty of implementing the arrest warrant.
She said that there was still a possibility that Bangayan might still be arrested and that she has instructed the NBI to get more evidence so that there would be “positive results” in the probe.
“The NBI will continue to gather more evidence, more irrefutable proof of their claim that they are looking at the right guy… I want more proof that [Bangayan and Tan] are really the one and the same person,” she said.
Same address
She noted that the address of Bangayan was “exactly the same as the address of David Tan” stated in the arrest warrant.
“Of course we are all interested in David Tan because he is the one coming out as the dominant figure in rice smuggling and that certain sources are saying that his group is the new rice cartel,” De Lima said.
The militant Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KMP) on Wednesday said that whether or not the man who showed up at the DOJ on Tuesday was the alleged rice smuggling king, it is not the end of the rice smuggling issue.
Antonio Flores, the KMP secretary general, warned that the Aquino administration could use Bangayan as a scapegoat “to cover the tracks of government plunderers, divert the attention away from rice smuggling and justify the continuous antifarmer rice importation policy.”
“For sure, the blunder-prone Aquino administration will again defend one more political plunder,” he said.
Fictional character
The KMP suspects that David Tan is a fictional character that was invented to divert attention away from the questionable importation policy of the National Food Administration (NFA).
Flores maintained that the issues of Tan and the NFA’s overpriced rice importation have magnified the proliferation of corrupt practices under the Aquino administration.
He said the NFA should stop its “legalized smuggling through its policy of rice importation” which he said has emboldened rice smugglers like Tan.—With Delfin T. Mallari, Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon