Lawyer in pork scam exposé suing QC guards

BALIGOD

A lawyer who earlier made headlines as legal counsel for the whistle-blowers in the P10-billion pork barrel scam is preparing criminal charges against a group of security guards who he said fired their guns at him and his colleagues at a disputed property in Quezon City on Wednesday.

Levito Baligod, who has reported the April 1 incident to the Quezon City Police District, said he would be pressing charges for attempted homicide against members of Golden Cross security agency, who were then guarding a vacant seven-hectare area on 14th Street in Barangay Damayan Lagi.

In a phone interview on Sunday, Baligod said his client Marlina Veloso was the legal owner of the land yet it was still being occupied by guards hired by realty firm Titan Dragon Properties Corp.

The company, under a previous owner, sold the property to Veloso in 1998 but has yet to pay the capital gains tax needed to seal the deal, according to the lawyer.

Baligod went to the fenced-in property on Wednesday around 7:20 a.m. to talk to the occupants and find out the company’s new office address. When he and his colleagues peeked through the gate, they were met with hostility by armed guards, who shouted invectives and threatened to kill them, he said.

“Kung papasok kayo dito, kakatayin namin kayo! (If you try to enter, we will have you slaughtered!)” he quoted one of the guards as saying.

Another guard allegedly pointed an M-16 rifle at him. When Baligod and his companions started to back off, a series of gunshots were heard from the other side of the gate, he said.

“It seemed that they were shooting at the ground or in the air, but I heard some bullets bouncing off the gate,” Baligod said in Filipino.

In his report to the QCPD, Baligod said he saw one of the guards fire a revolver in his direction.

Alarmed residents complained to barangay officials and the QCPD-Galas station. A broadcast news team later arrived at the site but one guard also aimed his gun at the reporter, Baligod said.

When several policemen arrived and asked the guards to let them in so Baligod could identify those who fired their guns, “they were also roundly cursed and threatened. They couldn’t do anything,” Baligod said.

In the interview, Baligod said he had obtained the names of the guards who were on duty at the time. “We will file a case for attempted homicide against the 22 guards and their security supervisor. I already tried to avoid them (at the gate), but they still fired. What they did and said showed an intention to harm us,” he said.

He said he would also seek the cancellation of the guards’ licenses.

Baligod rose to prominence in 2013 as private counsel of the pork barrel scam whistle-blowers, who are now prosecution witnesses in the ensuing plunder case in the Sandiganbayan against three senators and the scam’s alleged mastermind, businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

In March 2014, eight months after the scam was exposed by the Inquirer, Baligod was quoted by the paper as saying that Benhur Luy, the most prominent of his clients, no longer needed his services as “everything was already in place,” though he also said “someone wants to control Benhur and I will be a hindrance to that.”