Aventajado to detractors: Show proof

Flagship Programs and Projects Secretary Robert Aventajado, the government’s leading negotiator in the recent Mindanao hostage crisis, dared his detractors yesterday to show proof of the administration’s alleged dirty dealings with Abu Sayyaf kidnappers.

Aventajado also challenged the press to be fair, appealing to newspapers to desist from publishing defamatory news items not based on hard evidence.

"I have already set the record straight. Neither I nor President Estrada received any part of the ransom paid to the Abu Sayyaf," Aventajado said in a letter to The STAR.

The former chief negotiator was reacting to recent wire reports from Kuala Lumpur about the claims of a Malaysian businessman that several unnamed personalities had pocketed some of the ransom money.

Malaysian Yusof Hamdan, who helped in the talks to end a six-month hostage crisis involving 21 mostly foreign hostages last April, said the other day he has recordings that revealed an attempt by a ranking Philippine official to solicit money from a Malaysian emissary during a negotiation to release the last three Malaysian hostages.

Yusof said he will be writing a book on the hostage dealings "so that the whole world will finally know who the crooks and the innocents are."

Aventajado said he welcomed any investigation into the Abu Sayyaf negotiations, but pointed out that it was apparent that some people are out to ruin his name and that of the President by feeding the press "misinformation and disinformation."

He said the press should stop referring to the so-called tapes of telephone conversations which a foreign magazine had also earlier used in its report on alleged ransom cuts.

Last month, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported that the German secret police tapped satellite phone conversations between Abu Sayyaf leader Ghalib Andang and Aventajado. The magazine reported that Mr. Estrada pocketed around 40 percent of a $20-million ransom allegedly paid by donors in Germany and Libya to the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers.

Der Spiegel said Aventajado earned 10 percent of the total.

German police later denied being the source of the allegations and confirmed that the telephone exchanges did not indicate that Philippine officials made money from the hostage crisis.

Wait-and-see on tell-all book

Malacañang adopted yesterday a wait-and-see attitude on the book that will supposedly reveal the government’s hand in the attempt to solicit money from the ransom payments to Malaysian hostages.

Acting Press Secretary Mike Toledo said he hopes the book or other future publications on the hostage crisis do not turn out to be libelous.
"We will first await publication of Mr. Yusof’s book. Let us hope it won’t be libelous. Otherwise, the necessary action will be filed," Toledo said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) simply shrugged off reports on Yusof’s book.

"The country has already suffered much already from the hostage crisis in terms of our image. I don’t think it can be damaged much more than that," a DFA official said.

Malaysian Ambassador Manzoor Hussein bin Mohammad Arshad said Kuala Lumpur had nothing to do with the book on the hostage crisis, but pointed out that they cannot stop an individual from writing one.

Yusof was not officially sent by Kuala Lumpur to negotiate for the release of the hostages.

"The businessmen were private negotiators. They were here because they wanted to help as private individuals," the ambassador said.

Meanwhile, highly placed sources told The STAR that the Malaysian would-be author is a close ally of businessman Lee Peng Wee, who might have an axe to grind against Aventajado because of a misunderstanding during the negotiations for the release of the hostages.

Lee, who was then presidential adviser on Mindanao affairs, had initially negotiated for the release of the Malaysian hostages. – Marichu Villanueva, Aurea Calica