Valerio kin, friends offer P3-M reward

Family, friends and colleagues of slain government corporate counsel Jun Valerio have put up a P3-million reward for anyone who could lead police to the arrest of three men who shot the lawyer dead last Saturday.

"We want them alive," said Laarni Valerio, sister of the slain top government corporate lawyer. "We are offering the reward to help investigators crack the case," she told a press forum at a restaurant in Quezon City.

According to lawyer Godofredo De Guzman, close friend and former law partner of Valerio when the latter was still in private practice, the idea to offer a monetary reward -- P1 million for each of the three suspects -- was broached when Jun was laid to rest the other day.

He said the rewards will only be given when the information leads to the arrest of the assassins who should be taken alive.

He said anyone who knows about the killing may relay the information to National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Federio Opinion or to lawyer George Jularbal, chief of the NBI Field Operations Division, who is handling the investigation on the case.

"The informant may also talk directly to me or Laarni," said the lawyer. He said he may be contacted by cellphone at 0912-8048706. Laarni may be reached at cellphone number 0917-439168, he added. Laarni said her brother left a lucrative practice because he wanted to help the Estrada administration. "In his dedication to duty, he braved even the anger of bullets which tore through his body and took his life," he said.

She believes the killing may have something to do with her brother's job as the government lawyer handling cases on behalf of government-owned-and-controlled corporations (GOCCs).

"Many million-peso government contracts pass through his scrutiny," she told reporters. According to her, Jun, who loved their "one big happy family," only shared with his family members "his joys and kept to himself his pains."

"I knew him to be man who had no enemies," she said. "He wanted nothing else but the good of his fellowmen and the purity of his own self."