Department of Justice building. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Suspected rice smuggler Davidson Bangayan on Thursday asked the Department of Justice (DoJ) to dismiss the perjury case filed against him by the Senate Committee on Agriculture.
In his counter-affidavit, Bangayan insisted that he is not David Tan and his identity is not the subject of the Senate hearing where he was invited merely as a resource person.
“Clearly, the Senate inquiry was about rice sufficiency, rice importation and/or smuggling. It was never about who ‘David Tan’ is. All the more, the Senate inquiry was never about who I was, or whether or not I and that person identified as ‘David Tan’ are one and the same person,” Bangayan said in his counter affidavit.
Responding to the Senate committee’s assertion that he represented himself as ‘David Tan’ in the libel complaint he filed against Philippine Federation of Industries President Jesus Arranza in 2005, Bangayan said his lawyers borrowed the phrase “Davidson Bangayan alias David Tan” from the article and used it in his affidavit.
He explained that since he is not a lawyer, he relied on the advice of his legal counsels.
“Being a layman, I relied heavily on my lawyer’s advice that it was necessary for my complaint to quote the exact wording of the libelous article,” he said in his counter-affidavit, adding that he has already made this clear when he was summoned to the Senate inquiry on rice smuggling in the country early this month.
“Lack of prudence, oversight or even simple negligence, do not necessarily translate into the presence of malice or evil intent on my part,” Bangayan said.
Last month, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) seized Bangayan, with the belief that he is David Tan, in connection with a pending case before the Caloocan City Regional Trial Court for the violation of Republic Act 7832 or the Anti-Electricity and Electric Transmission Lines/Materials Pilferage Act. He was immediately released after his lawyers produced documents showing that he was not Tan.
However, Bangayan was ordered rearrested by the Caloocan Court after the DoJ and NBI submitted additional evidence to show that Bangayan and Tan were one and the same person.
Senate agriculture committee chairperson Cynthia Villar said her panel decided to cite Bangayan for contempt after he repeatedly denied being David Tan despite court records showing otherwise.