Marcos Jr. defends father’s trade minister

Coming to the defense of his late father’s trade minister, Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. wondered aloud whether the Commission on Audit’s probe into the P660-million loan extended by the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) to businessman Roberto Ongpin was a “witch hunt.”

Marcos questioned the motive behind the COA’s initiating an investigation into what is alleged to have been a “behest loan” to Ongpin’s Delta Venture Resources in 2009.

“We have to determine whether there is a political motive behind this investigation. Was this instigated? Was this part of a witch hunt or was this a part of a normal investigation process?” Marcos said, speaking to reporters after a hearing on Friday of the Senate blue ribbon committee probing the alleged scam.

“That is why it is important to see what initiated the investigation in the first place,” said the senator, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

At the hearing, Marcos zeroed in on COA Chair Grace Pulido-Tan, particularly after Tan admitted that the agency had initiated the investigation partly because an item concerning the loan to Ongpin had appeared in a newspaper column.

“That is one of the reasons why it is a little surprising to me because I did not imagine that COA initiated (an) investigation solely on the basis of newspaper reports,” he said.

“That does not seem to be a sufficient basis for conducting an investigation. What comes out in the newspaper is not evidence. It cannot be a basis of any conclusion,” said Marcos.

Off-tangent

After a lengthy exchange between Marcos and COA officials, Sen. Panfilo Lacson interjected and asked his colleagues to go back to the original issue of the alleged “behest loan.”

It was Lacson who filed the resolution seeking a legislative inquiry into the alleged “behest loan” to Ongpin and of similar transactions with government banks and financial institutions during the previous Arroyo administration.

Ongpin, who served under the elder Marcos as trade minister from 1979 to 1986, has denied any wrongdoing and accused the DBP board of engaging in a witch hunt.