Ruby Tuason: Hubby’s insurance funded Dasmariñas house purchase

By: Nancy C. Carvajal - 11 years ago

Ruby Tuason, as claimed by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada (inset) on Tuesday, is being fed by government agents with “fabricated” information to nail him down for plunder in connection with an alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam. FILE PHOTOS

Provisional state witness Ruby Tuason on Friday denied Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s allegations that she bought her Dasmariñas Village house with the kickbacks that she allegedly got from the Malampaya Fund scam.

Tuason, who testified before the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on the P10-billion pork barrel scam that she had personally handed millions of pesos in kickbacks to Estrada, has offered to become a witness for the prosecution to escape indictment in the pork scam case.

Speaking through her lawyer, Dennis Manalo, Tuason said she was hurt and offended by Estrada’s allegations and reiterated that she would “stick to the truth.”

She denied that the Dasmariñas residence, which she is now trying to sell so she can return the P40 million she admitted to have received as commission from the pork barrel scam, had been bought from commissions from the Malampaya Fund scam.

Two insurance policies

“The money she received from her husband’s two insurance policies was more than enough to buy the house,” said Manalo.

Manalo furnished the Inquirer a copy of the letter from the insurance company showing that on July 22, 2008, Tuason received a total of $1.8 million, equivalent to about P84 million, from the two insurance policies of her late husband, Carlos Tuason.

Estrada, in a privilege speech on Thursday, said Tuason bought the Dasmariñas house for P45 million at about the same time that Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind of the P10-billion pork barrel scam, was pulling off the P900-million Malampaya Fund scam in 2009.

To counter Estrada’s statements that Tuason’s late brother, Remy Chan, had died of cancer and was too sick to have made the Malampaya Fund transactions, Manalo sent a photo of Chan supposedly taken on November 2009 showing Chan to have been quite chubby.

“Her brother did not die of cancer but of a heart attack, and was healthy enough to conduct his own transactions around that time,” Manalo said.

(Tuason claimed in her sworn affidavit that it was her brother who was involved in the Malampaya Fund scam.)

Misleading Jinggoy video

Tuason, also through Manalo, confirmed that it was she in the Senate CCTV footage that Estrada showed at the Senate hearing but clarified that in her testimony, she had said that she went in through the parking area escorted by Estrada’s security detail every time she brought him his share of the pork kickbacks.

“The video shown by Senator Estrada was misleading because in her testimony, she specifically said she passed through the parking area whenever she brought in money in duffel bags,” Manalo said.

Tuason also denied that she owned properties in Alabang and Valle Verde, as Estrada alleged.

Manalo said Tuason wanted the public to know that she was using her own private funds for her current trip to the United States where she last month voluntarily surrendered to agents of the National Bureau of Investigation.

The lawyer said Tuason was offering her apologies to Justice Secretary Leila de Lima for the unnecessary controversy created by her recent departure for the United States, ostensibly to look for ways to finance her commitment to return the P40 million she allegedly earned from the scam.

Tuason, one of the respondents in a plunder complaint in the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam, has been granted provisional state witness status in exchange for her testimony.

She fled the country when her name was dragged into the controversy and returned on Feb. 7 after executing a 15-page affidavit about the scam at the Philippine consulate in San Francisco, California, on Feb. 4.

Personal delivery

In the affidavit, which she also submitted to the Ombudsman and the blue ribbon committee, Tuason claimed to have personally delivered commissions to Estrada in the Senate and his residence in San Juan City.

She said she was also the one who picked up the commissions for Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, which she delivered to Enrile’s former chief of staff, lawyer Lucila Jessica “Gigi” Reyes.

Estrada, Enrile and Reyes are all coaccused in the plunder complaint in the Office of the Ombudsman.

Tuason said she personally knows Estrada because she was the social secretary of his father, deposed President and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada.

In her affidavit, Tuason said it was her late husband who introduced Napoles to her sometime in 2004.