PNP ‘chief in waiting’ denies role in arms deal with NPA

MANILA, Philippines–A mountain out of a molehill.

This was how a ranking police officer tagged in the sale of more than P52 million worth of high-powered firearms to communist rebels on Sunday described the alleged anomaly, which President Aquino himself had ordered investigated.

Chief Supt. Raul Petrasanta, Central Luzon police chief, expressed confidence he would be exonerated after a police investigation identified him as among the 19 Philippine National Police officers responsible for the sale of 1,004 AK-47 assault rifles to the New People’s Army (NPA).

“We will have our day in court and I am confident the truth will come out,” Petrasanta said in a statement e-mailed to the Inquirer.

“More importantly, I do not want our commander in chief, President Aquino, to think that a media war is ensuing as this case has been blown out of proportion,” he said.

“Also, I refuse to fan the flames pitting me against some PNP officials. This is not the time for service politics and grandstanding,” he said.

Instead of engaging his fellow police officers in a word war, Petrasanta said he opted to “remain focused on my duties here in Central Luzon rather than aggravate the situation.”

A former head of the Presidential Security Group unit assigned to the residence of President Aquino’s family on Times Street in Quezon City, Petrasanta is widely seen as the “PNP chief in waiting.”

Purisima retiring

Current PNP Director General Alan Purisima, one of the President’s closest friends in government, is retiring from the service in November 2015.

Petrasanta was implicated in the highly irregular arms deal after the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) found that some of the firearms that ended up with the communist rebels were registered during his stint as chief of the PNP Firearms and Explosives Office (FEO) in 2013.

The CIDG investigation was prompted by President Aquino’s disclosure in December last year of the PNP’s failure to account for a cache of imported high-powered firearms.

In a news briefing at Camp Crame on Thursday, CIDG chief Director Benjamin Magalong said the firearms were sold to the rebels by businessman Isidro Lozada, who allegedly duped the police officials into believing that the guns were to be delivered to private security agencies of mining companies in Mindanao.

Magalong said that Lozada, who owned a security agency, bought the AK-47 rifles from Twin Pines Inc., a gun importer accredited by the FEO, and sold them to the NPA for P52,000 each from 2011 to 2013.

Besides Petrasanta, the CIDG will file cases of graft and of violation of the anti-illegal firearms law against Directors Gil Meneses and Napoleon Estilles, Chief Supt. Regino Catiis, retired Chief Supt. Tomas Rentoy and 14 other active police officers.

Lozada, who claimed that he was threatened by the communist rebels in order to force him to facilitate their procurement of firearms, and nine other private individuals will also face charges in the gun deal.

Exercise due diligence

Although there was no evidence showing that they made kickbacks from the transaction, Magalong said the police officers could have prevented the firearms from ending up in the hands of the NPA, “if they only did what they had to do.”

“The documents for the firearms went through their offices. It was incumbent upon them to exercise due diligence in examining the documents,” he said.

Magalong said five of the AK-47 assault rifles that Lozada sold to the NPA were recovered by the military from communist insurgents following recent skirmishes in the Caraga region and western Mindanao.

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