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ENVIRONMENT Secretary Lito Atienza, National Police
chief Avelino Razon Jr. and former presidential chief
of staff Mike Defensor Monday clarified that it was
controversial witness Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. who sought
their assistance in avoiding a warrant of arrest issued
by Senate investigators who wanted Lozada to testify.
Testifying under oath, Atienza and Razon confirmed they
also coordinated in providing police security escorts to
Lozada, who feared for his safety, as well as his
family, in the face of death threats he received in
connection with the national broadband network (NBN)
deal that President Arroyo ordered aborted in the wake
of a full-blown scandal hounding her administration.
Lozada
admitted that he left for Hong Kong last week to avoid
the warrant of arrest and sought the help of Atienza
when he came back because he “did not want to go to the
Senate and wanted to stop the death threats against him
and because I cannot lie when I testify there.”
Atienza’s statement was bolstered by the testimony
before the Senate of Lozada’s lawyer Antonio Bautista,
who said Lozada had confided to him during their first
meeting February 5 that his brother had been talking
with opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson.
This
developed as the testimonies during the hearing by
Atienza, Bautista and Defensor along with police and
airport officials had all debunked Lozada’s claim that
he was abducted upon his airport arrival and then forced
to sign a prepared affidavit denying any knowledge of
alleged irregularities in the NBN-ZTE project.
Lozada’s
allegations about a supposed kidnapping were further
punctured by the disclosure before the Senate by his
security detail from the Police Security and Protection
Office (PSPO) that Lozada had armed bodyguards at the
dormitory of La Salle Greenhills where he and his family
had stayed overnight on February 5 and 6.
Razon;
the Manila International Airport Authority assistant
general manager for security, Angel Atutubo; and the
Ninoy Aquino International Airport general manager,
Alfonso Cusi; maintained that contrary to Lozada’s claim
that he was kidnapped, he was not forced to go with his
PSPO escorts who were assigned to secure him upon his
arrival from Hong Kong on February 5 upon his request.
Senior
Supt. Paul Mascarińas, who headed the PSPO team assigned
to Lozada, disclosed during the joint Senate inquiry
that when security detail escorted him to the third
floor of the dormitory at La Salle Greenhills after
their dinner at a Quezon City restaurant, he discovered
that there were three armed men acting as Lozada’s
private security men who were posted in the area.
Mascarińas said that it was Lozada’s sister, Carmen, who
had introduced the armed men to him and informed him
that they were his brother’s personal security men.
“Carmen,
the sister of Jun [Lozada], told me that they were Jun’s
private bodyguards who were retired military personnel,”
Mascarinas said.
Defensor
corroborated the testimonies of the police and airport
officials, saying that Lozada had assured him at the
dormitory of La Salle Greenhills, where Lozada was
escorted to by his PSPO escorts upon his request, that
he was not being held against his will by his police
escorts at that school.
Defensor,
who narrated before senators how he had gotten in touch
with Lozada and visited him during the latter’s stay at
La Salle Greenhills, said that when he told Lozada that
he will help him escape if he was indeed being kept by
his PSPO security detail against his will, the latter
assured him he had not been kidnapped and that, “OK
naman ako dito.”
In his
testimony before the joint inquiry by three Senate
committees, Atienza said he felt misled by Lozada, who
had made it appear that he was seeking help only from
him regarding his possible arrest by the Senate, when
the truth was that he had already been talking with some
senators regarding his arrival to the Philippines and
plans to resign from Philippine Forest Corp., of which
he is the president.
Atienza
also asked why Lozada’s family had filed a writ of
habeas corpus and a writ of amparo before the Supreme
Court to compel police authorities to produce Lozada,
when at that time they were already together at the
dormitory of La Salle Greenhills in
San Juan,
Metro Manila.
“I felt
violated because all along I believed I was the only one
helping him. It turned out that he was talking to some
senators who already knew before I did that he was
cutting short his trip from Hong Kong, that he was
returning to Manila instead, and that he was resigning
from PhilForest,” Atienza told senators at the hearing
on the NBN deal.
During
the Senate hearing, Razon made it clear that Lozada
was neither kidnapped nor coerced by police escorts
assigned to him to ensure his safe arrival from Hong
Kong.
Razon
said that Lozada went with the officers of the PSPO on
his own free will and had never asked them to leave him
during the time that they were assigned to protect him.
Moreover, Razon pointed out that Lozada was free to use
his cellular phone and to communicate with whoever he
wanted to during the time he was being escorted by the
PSPO team.
“We only
kept silent about Mr. Lozada’s whereabouts due to
security reasons,” Razon said. “The National Police had
accomplished its mission [of securing Lozada]. He is
alive and well.”
At the
same time, senators are moving to blacklist Zhong Xing
Telecommunications Equipment Co. Ltd. (ZTE) of
China
after ZTE officials completely ignored repeated summons
to shed light on the $329-million NBN deal being
investigated by three Senate committees.
Sen.
Allan Cayetano, blue-ribbon committee chairman,
complained that Senate investigators looking into
alleged anomalies attending the aborted transaction sent
no less than three formal invitations to Manila-based
ZTE officials, “but they have not shown themselves, nor
sent their lawyers,” at the hearings.
“The
government should not deal with any company that refuses
to account for its actions here,” an exasperated
Cayetano asserted at yesterday’s resumption of joint
hearings being conducted by the blue-ribbon, trade and
commerce and defense committees.
He
lamented that while these ZTE officials were working on
a multimillion-dollar deal like the NBN project, “they
are here, but when there is already an investigation
they are gone.”
Cayetano
informed fellow senators that the secretariat was
informed that the Chinese telecommunications company’s
officials who negotiated the award, led by ZTE chairman
Fu Yong, have already left Manila so the Senate can no
longer serve a subpoena to compel them to testify on
allegations that the company had already advanced hefty
“commissions” to certain officials to bag the project.
In the
same hearing, businessman Jose de Venecia III reaffirmed
that the P132 million original cost of the national
broadband project ballooned to P262 million because
former elections chairman Benjamin Abalos wanted P130
million in “commission.”
De
Venecia, whose company Amsterdam Holdings lost the
bidding for the NBN project, recalled that Arroyo’s
brother, Buboy Macapagal, “was trying to guide me [on
the negotiations], but since Macapagal now lives in
Canada, he asked businessman Ricky Razon to help me
reconcile my proposal with Abalos.”
But when
the President’s husband Mike Arroyo allegedly told him
to “back off” to give way to Abalos, he reported this
to Razon, and the businessman blurted out “profanities
and blamed Abalos for promising a $70- million
commission to the President’s husband, who cannot forget
it.”
This
developed as Sen. Loren Legarda suggested that the
successful prosecution of graft and corruption cases
holds the key in plug huge losses in taxpayers’ money,
estimated to amount to P29.5 billion this year.
Legarda
pointed out that the on-going Senate hearings on the
scrapped NBN project will enable Congress to plug
loopholes in the law regulating government procurement
of goods and services.
“The NBN
hearings will help us craft amendments to Republic Act
9184 to ensure that it is attuned with the times,” she
said, referring to the Government Procurement Reform
Act. “Lawmakers must recognize the need to continually
fine-tune our laws since those who violate them are very
creative and they find ways to go around them.”
She
added that the antigraft and other relevant laws must be
strictly enforced and that violators should be promptly
punished.
Legarda
cited recent estimates done by the Makati Business Club
(MBC) that at least P29.5 billion in forecast losses
from tainted government deals represent 20 percent of
the State’s P147.662-billion capital outlay in the
P1.227-trillion national budget.
She
added that according to the MBC estimates, the money is
used in bribing government officials. |
