MANILA, Philippines—Thousands of files were apparently deleted from the hard drive of pork scam whistleblower Benhur Luy, the National Bureau of Investigator (NBI) forensic expert told the Sandiganbayan on Thursday.
During Senator Ramon Revilla Jr.’s bail hearing for plunder over the pork barrel scam, NBI forensic investigator Joey Narciso said he spotted at least 2,410 files deleted from the hard drive of Luy that was used as evidence against the senator.
Principal whistleblower Benhur Luy. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO
In the hard drive, Luy had documented the Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) transactions of Janet Lim-Napoles’ corporation allegedly with lawmakers for kickbacks.
The NBI forensic expert had said he copied the contents of the hard drive to a CD after the drive was turned over to him.
This is to ensure that the drive was not tampered with, Narciso said.
Narciso also confirmed that the hard drive may be susceptible to tampering due to the availability of technology.
Revilla’s lawyer Joel Bodegon said he will grill the NBI official in next week’s hearing to find out if it was him who tampered with the evidence.
“It will be speculative as of now until we make him admit that he tampered with the evidence,” Bodegon said in Filipino.
Revilla is detained at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center as he faces trial for plunder over the alleged scheme of spending public funds to ghost projects for kickbacks.
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