‘Go ahead, file the graft cases’

A brother-in-law of a Malacañang official summoned a former official of the Arroyo administration to a meeting at White Plains village in Quezon City.

After the usual amenities, the Palace official’s relative left, but not before entrusting the ex-official to the house owner.

The owner of the house, a gambling lord in Southern Tagalog, went straight to the point: If the former Arroyo administration official would come up with P50 milllion, graft cases being readied against him would not be filed.

The ex-official’s curt reply: “Go ahead, file the graft cases.”

* * *

The former official calls the Palace official’s brother-in-law an ingrato (ingrate).

He said that the brother-in-law approached him during the last election to seek a donation for a certain candidate.

According to him, he gave $1 million to the Malacañang official’s kin.

“I would have given him some more this time if I wasn’t threatened,” he told me.

* * *

Why is the Department of Justice not investigating the Pasay City prosecutor who downgraded the case against a Singaporean cheat to whom the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) lost more than P400 million?

Pagcor officials, who had the Singaporean arrested after he was caught cheating by an in-house camera, were shocked to find out that he had been charged with simple estafa.

It should have been syndicated estafa because the Singaporean had several accomplices when he cheated Pagcor.

The Singaporean left the country immediately after he was allowed to post bail.

Surely, he parted with some of the loot.

* * *

A former customs official is always seen in cockfight derbies betting millions of pesos on his fighting cocks.

Where did he get all that money?

By the way, somebody told me that the ex-customs official got the sister of a broker pregnant.

The broker was linked to the 2,000 missing containers.

* * *

A local official in Metro Manila is in Australia reportedly shopping for race horses.

Racehorses cost millions of pesos in Australia.

Where did he get all that money when he was poor before he got elected?

* * *

Retired Director General Jess Verzosa, former chief of the Philippine National Police, has been charged along with other active top and retired police officials for the P131.5-million purchase of rubber boats and outboard motors that turned out to be incompatible.

As a result, the boats were not used during the recent typhoons that flooded many towns in Bulacan and Pampanga.

Before the graft case surfaced, Verzosa had a bright future with the Aquino administration. He was even being considered as the next secretary of the interior.

A case of kuwarta na, naging bato pa.