LUY’S HARD DRIVE Lawyer Levito Baligod during an interview at the Inquirer office in Makati City on April 27, 2013, with Benhur Luy’s hard disk drive containing records of Janet Lim-Napoles’ pork barrel dealings on the table RAFFY LERMA
MANILA, Philippines—The Inquirer had the complete digital files of Benhur Luy before a copy of his hard disk drive (HDD) came into the possession of the National Bureau of Investigation, which reported Thursday that some records of pork barrel transactions between Janet Lim-Napoles and legislators were deleted. Most of the missing files were recovered but not all, according to an NBI source familiar with the HDD.
The NBI source also clarified that the deletions were not intentional but might have happened when Luy had to sign every page of the more than 2,000-page printout of financial transactions in the HDD submitted to the Department of Justice.
The HDD was the basis of the 13-part series published by the Inquirer this month.
A random search by an Inquirer IT specialist found the deleted files, reported by the NBI as missing, in the newspaper’s reproduction of the HDD provided by Luy’s former lawyer Levito Baligod and Luy’s parents during a visit to its Makati City office on April 27, 2013.
The NBI on Wednesday submitted its copy to the Senate blue ribbon committee, which within hours released it to senators and reporters.
Baligod said that Luy’s digital files contained in an external drive were completely copied by the Inquirer on April 27, 2013.
“PDI was intentionally allowed to duplicate those files to make it (PDI) a neutral repository of the same, and to have a warranty against any unforeseen circumstance that may affect their contents.” Baligod said in a text message to the Inquirer. “The duplication process retains the digital properties of each file.”
The deleted files concern mostly local government units/officials.
But the Inquirer series deferred the publication of the names of more than 100 LGU officials because of the voluminous files involved. It was also next to impossible to determine between those who were merely used by Napoles from those who actually benefited from her bogus operations.
Glimpses from deleted files
One item in the Inquirer copy, which was deleted from the NBI hard drive, referred to “Bigboy,” created on Aug. 1, 2012, at 2:50 p.m. In Excel form the entry was described as “50M _LGUs_POGI_Bigboy.” It further said that the “P50 M project description implementing agency amount (Local Government Units) Financial Assistance for the implementation of livelihood projects. (i.e organic farming for high value crops) for Umingan [in Pangasinan].”
Another file supposed to have been created on Sept. 14, 2013—titled in the NBI copy as “Name Listing-50M Request Letter of Pimentel 2nd Tranch.doc.”—was created on Nov. 6, 2007, at 4:21 p.m, based on Luy’s files given to the Inquirer last year.
Another entry also missing in the NBI files submitted to the Senate blue ribbon committee was “Name 200M_Sexy_Ochoa.doc created on June 7, 2012 at 12:28 p.m.”
Another file that was supposed to have been missing was a draft letter written to President Aquino requesting P300 million for victims of “recent calamity in Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro.” But the letter did not bear any signature.
Luy’s records showed that the letter supposedly for Aquino dated Feb. 16, 2012, was created also on the same day at 2:47 p.m.
When contacted by the Inquirer, Baligod said that Luy’s HDD was officially submitted to the NBI Cybercrime Division on Jan. 27, 2014. Before that Baligod said the HDD was in the possession of Luy “because he had to refer to it to summarize its content.”
The HDD was the basis for the various affidavits Luy executed and submitted to the Office of the Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman on April 1 said there was sufficient evidence to charge Napoles, Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr., with plunder in connection with the siphoning of the congressional Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or pork barrel, to ghost projects and kickbacks.
In a series of articles culled from Luy’s computer articles, the Inquirer reported that 15 incumbent and 10 former senators had transactions with Napoles during a 10-year period during which some P10 billion worth of PDAF projects was stolen. The series also named 138 congressmen, the agents/conduits of the PDAF beneficiaries, officials in the Executive branch and some members of the media.
Originally posted at 12:45 am | Friday, May 30, 2014
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