Estrada may attend Senate hearing to confront Cunanan

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Dennis Cunanan, the director general (on leave) of the Technology Resource Center (TRC), will appear next week at a Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on the pork barrel scam, and possibly be confronted by one of the senators he has accused of assigning his pork barrel allotments to bogus nongovernment organizations.

In the affidavit he submitted to investigators, Cunanan, who has applied to become a state witness, said that Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. had called him up to endorse NGOs controlled by alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles as recipients of their pork funds.

Estrada told reporters on Tuesday that because of the allegedly “relentless persecution” against him, he might just reconsider his previous position of staying away from the blue ribbon inquiry and personally confront Cunanan at the Thursday hearing.

“Even when it was still Mrs. Tuason [on the witness stand], I already wanted to attend [the hearing]. I was just kept from doing so,” he said.

“It seems that they don’t want to stop going after us. This has been a relentless persecution from Day One,” he added.

The TRC, as the chosen implementing agency of the legislator-endorsed projects, received the funds from the Department of Budget and Management and would then release them to the NGOs chosen by the legislators to carry out the pork-funded projects.

Kickbacks

The Napoles-controlled NGOs, after receiving the millions of pesos from the lawmakers’ pork barrel, or the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), allegedly converted the funds almost in their entirety into kickbacks for Napoles, the lawmakers and their accomplices in the government line agencies.

Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, the chair of the Senate blue ribbon panel, said Cunanan is slated to appear before the committee on Thursday, March 6. It will be the second time Cunanan will appear before the committee.

“This is in connection with answering questions on what really happened, how it happened, who should be held accountable and what should be done to prevent a repeat of whatever it was that happened,” Guingona told reporters.

Cunanan will be the second respondent granted provisional state witness status to appear before the Senate inquiry. The first was Estrada’s family friend, Ruby Tuason.

“We just verified [with Justice Secretary Leila de Lima] if he was indeed with the witness protection program and we were told that he was and they are quite willing to bring him on Thursday,” Guingona said.

According to Estrada, in his first appearance before the committee, Cunanan did not say anything about any phone call to him and Revilla.

Lie-detector challenge

“Why is it that all of a sudden he’s saying that he made a phone call to me, he made a phone call to Senator Revilla? He’s even saying that we were upset [when he talked to us]. We supposedly asked why the funds had yet to be released,” Estrada said.

“I have never seen that guy in my entire life,” he added.

Estrada challenged all the whistle-blowers to take a lie detector test, “even Mrs. Tuason.”

“We should take it all at the same time so we will immediately know the result,” he said.

Revilla said he had received information that it was his former seatmate at the Senate, Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II, who convinced Cunanan to turn state witness.

“It shouldn’t be this way. We have received information that it was he who convinced Cunanan. If you would put yourself in my place, you would also feel bad,” he said.

Revilla called on Roxas to resign because of his supposed shortcomings as a member of the Cabinet.

In a privilege speech last January, Revilla claimed that Roxas had driven him to meet with President Aquino at the height of the impeachment trial of former Chief Justice Renato Corona. At the meeting, he said Aquino had asked him to support the removal of the Chief Justice.

Guingona said he did not see any need to again invite Tuason to the hearing.

In her testimony early this month, Tuason said she had personally delivered kickback money to Estrada and Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s chief of staff Jessica Lucila Reyes.

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