Aquino ally may be cleared of pork raps

By: Christine O. Avendaño - 11 years ago

Joel Villanueva INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–Is Joel Villanueva, director general of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, on the verge of being exonerated from the pork barrel scam probe?

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said that the National Bureau of Investigation had found that most of the documents in Villanueva’s case bore signatures that were not his.

De Lima said that Villanueva was being investigated for his pork barrel allocations that were channeled to bogus nongovernment organizations of Janet Lim-Napoles.

“That’s an important factor that the questioned documents unit of the NBI had this kind of findings,” De Lima said when asked whether the NBI had cleared Villanueva of involvement in the scam.

“Many of the documents that were examined were not (signed) by the same hand,” she said.

Told that key whistle-blower Benhur Luy had said that he faked the signatures of lawmakers in going about the scam allegedly masterminded by Napoles, De Lima said it really depended on the documents that were forged.

She declined to say what documents were found to bear fake signatures of Villanueva, a former Citizens Battle against Corruption representative, as these were still being evaluated by the NBI.

The Inquirer earlier said Villanueva was among 11 incumbent and former lawmakers who would be charged with malversation in the third and last batch of pork barrel cases related to the P10-billion pork barrel scam that the NBI would be filing in the Office of the Ombudsman.

The NBI was supposed to file the last batch of cases last week.

On Monday, De Lima said the NBI was still evaluating the cases, including that of Villanueva.

“We are evaluating everything supposedly in the third batch… It’s being evaluated until we file cases,” she told reporters. She added that the evaluation would not take too long to complete.

De Lima said the justice department was making it a point to evaluate everything so that the case would stand scrutiny in the Ombudsman and the Sandiganbayan.