Senators oppose Cunanan immunity

Dennis Cunanan faces perjury charges for denying he got a kickback in the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam, senators Grace Poe and Aquilino Pimentel III (inset) warned on Sunday. INQUIRER FILE PHOTOS

MANILA, Philippines—Dennis Cunanan faces perjury charges for denying he got a kickback in the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam, senators warned on Sunday.

For his sake, the director general of the state-operated Technology Resource Center (TRC) should say whether he received a P960,000 incentive from the scam and met alleged pork barrel queen Janet Lim-Napoles, or face charges of perjury, Sen. Grace Poe said.

“He should not be given legislative immunity,” Poe said over radio station dzBB. “Will you tell the whole truth? If he didn’t fulfill that, then he can’t enjoy the privilege that comes with it.”

Poe, who questioned Cunanan on his role in the scam in Thursday’s Senate blue ribbon committee hearing, reiterated that the 42-year-old TRC chief who is on leave “came up very short in telling the truth.”

Cunanan is among 38 people named in a complaint filed in the Office of the Ombudsman last September in connection with allegations that allocations from the lawmakers’ Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) had been channeled to ghost projects of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) controlled by Napoles.

In an attempt to escape prosecution, the TRC official has offered to turn state witness and provide evidence implicating Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Ramon Revilla Jr. and Juan Ponce Enrile in the PDAF racket. He said the senators had pressured him to course their PDAF allocations to the Napoles NGOs.

But he has come under fire for being less than forthcoming in his responses to allegations by the whistle-blowers that he received a P960,000 kickback from Napoles and that he personally met Napoles in her office.

Not qualified

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III agreed that Cunanan was not qualified for immunity from suit for a resource person testifying in Congress.

“The application is doubtful because some have doubts over whether he was telling the whole truth. And since we’re through with the hearing, what’s the use?” Pimentel said over dzBB.

The senator said Cunanan “was lying” when he denied claims by whistle-blower Benhur Luy that he prepared a bag filled with cash amounting to P960,000 for Cunanan on Napoles’ order, and that he saw Cunanan leave the conference room of the JLN office with the bag.

Otherwise, Cunanan’s application for congressional immunity was “redundant” because he had also been provisionally admitted into the government’s witness protection program (WPP), Pimentel said.

The Senate President recommends such immunity for a resource person, but it’s the justice secretary who finally approves it, he added.

Cunanan, who claimed that some P600 million in PDAF allocations was coursed through the TRC between 2007 and 2009 when he was its deputy director general, denied Luy’s claim that he received P960,000.

When pressed why he omitted his meeting with Napoles at the JLN office from his affidavit, as stated by Luy, Cunanan said he must have visited the JLN office in one of the TRC’s inspections.

Some senators cited the conflicting testimonies of Luy and Cunanan to call on the Department of Justice to review Cunanan’s admission into the WPP, if not his request to become state witness.

The Inquirer tried to reach Cunanan’s lawyer, Odessa Bernardo, for comment, but she did not respond to calls.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima earlier said she would ask Cunanan to explain this, but otherwise his testimony that the senators contacted him to follow up their project proposals was substantive.

Commission on Audit Chair Grace Pulido-Tan said Cunanan and heads of other implementing agencies should be held accountable.

Management fees

They did not perform their role because their agencies took the 3-percent and 10-percent management fees from the PDAF funds that were coursed their offices for dubious NGOs, Tan said

Poe urged Cunanan to deal with the issues squarely for his own good, otherwise he could be charged in court later on.

“What if charges are filed against him later on when he’s no longer immune because he did not include something in his first affidavit? If you enjoy state witness privileges, you should disclose whether you receive anything, and it’s up to them to decide whether you should return it,” she said.

Pimentel agreed that Cunanan should “tell the whole truth,” otherwise the defense would pounce on any inconsistency in his testimony to destroy the government’s case.

“If you lie in one point, you could be lying in the rest,” he said. “That will affect the entire testimony of Cunanan.”

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