PNP officers handled ‘Bikoy’ before – Lacson

Peter Joemel Advincula, the man who claims to be “Bikoy” in the videos linking President Duterte’s family to illegal drugs, used to be handled by active police officers, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said on Thursday.

“Based on the information I gathered, he was working with some Philippine National Police personnel who were still active at the time,” said Lacson, who scrapped a planned Senate hearing on Advincula’s allegations, saying the latter was no longer credible.

But Lacson said he was unaware if these same officials were still behind Advincula.

According to the senator, the police handlers had tried to use Advincula in 2016 to impress the Duterte administration.

“I only saw one motivation. The police officers probably wanted to be under the good graces of the new administration at the time,” Lacson said at the Kapihan sa Senado forum.

Lacson said he had wanted to find out Advincula’s new handlers during the Senate hearing he had planned to call on Friday, but decided to cancel it after hearing Senate President Vicente Sotto III’s revelations.

He had also planned to allow Advincula to speak about his allegations against the Duterte family during the hearing, Lacson said, after which he would confront Advincula with allegations he had made in 2016 through the testimony of Sotto’s staff member, Hutch Altavas.

Setup

Advincula could then have been held in contempt for lying, Lacson said.

“For lack of a better word, it was supposed to be a setup. Which did not happen,” he added.

Lacson said he would leave it up to the executive branch to find out who Advincula’s current handlers are.

“For the Senate to still intervene and exert effort to find out, that’s no longer our job,” he said.

According to Sotto, Advincula had tried to link former President Benigno Aquino III, former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and former Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to the illegal drug trade in December 2016.

But Sotto said he did not find Advincula’s allegations to be credible.

Earlier this month, Advincula, through videos narrated by a man calling himself “Bikoy,” made similar allegations against the Duterte family.