Senate blue ribbon commitee chairman Teofisto Guingona III shows before the media a copy Benhur Luy’s digital records. MAILA AGER/INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines – Some digital files of whistleblower Benhur Luy were allegedly “deleted” but were “retrieved” by forensic experts of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), an official bared on Wednesday.
Ronald Aguto, chief of NBI’s Cybercrime Division, made the disclosure when the NBI, led by its head, Virgilio Mendez, submitted the digital recordings contained in a compact disc (CD) to Senator Teofisto Guingona III, chairman of the Senate blue ribbon committee.
Mendez said the CD contained 31, 700 pages that if printed, Guingona said, could “fill a whole room.”
Guingona said the CD also contained a “forensic report” of the NBI.
Aguto then explained that the NBI conducted a forensic examination and detected that some of the files had been deleted.
“Na-retrieved natin yung ibang mga files that were deleted and part of the report would be those that were retrieved from the software and the contents,” he told reporters.
“May mga [There were] deleted files that we’re able to retrieve,” he said.
Asked what files were deleted from Luy’s records, Aguto said: “I’m not particular kung anong [as to which] files but it’s all in the report.”
“Madami sya e [There are a lot],” he added.
Aguto could not also say who deleted the files.
“We don’t know because when the hard drive is given to us, we just examine it. During the examination, the software was able to detect some deleted files and we were able to recover it,” he said.
Asked again if the files could be modified, Aguto said there was a device attached in the hard drive to “preserve the integrity” of the files.
Aguto said the NBI was in possession of Luy’s files either in December 2012 or January 2013 and which allegedly contained “pork barrel” transactions of detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.
The files were transferred to a compact disc that was sealed when the NBI turned it over to Guingona and was only opened by Aguto and inserted into a laptop in front of media.
“We have it here in front of us, as you can see it is sealed. It has a seal and it has a signature by special investigator Joel Narciso. It is sealed and it has a signature,” Guingona told reporters.
“We will reproduce this for the senators so they will have a copy. But right now we will open the seal and have the chief of the Cybercrime Division of the NBI, Ronado Aguto, open the disk in front of everyone so that it can be viewed,” he said.
Guingona said the committee would first collate the data about the “pork” scam, evaluate and analyze them before calling another hearing.
Mendoza said the NBI has submitted a hard copy of Luy’s recordings to the Office of the Ombudsman and was now leaving it up to Guingona whether or not to make the files public.
But Guingona said that he would disclose the contents of the CD “in the spirit of transparency, again, in the spirit of openness and transparency and in the interest of the public”.
And if there was any indication that the files submitted by the NBI were different from what was reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, then Guingona said the committee would recognize as official what had been submitted to the body.
“This one stands because this is official, and officially submitted to us,” said the senator.
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