NBI suffers setback in mansions’ probe

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) admitted yesterday it was having difficulty in its probe on several mansions believed to have been illegally acquired by ousted President Joseph Estrada.

"The paper trail is proving to be difficult to crack," said NBI director Reynaldo Wycoco. "We need to do more investigating to get to the bottom of this."

Government prosecutors in the aborted impeachment trial of Estrada claimed that he owned a number of palatial houses in posh subdivisions in Metro Manila, including the so-called Boracay mansion in New Manila, Quezon City, which housed his mistresses.

Wycoco said initial findings showed that the mansions were in the names of either corporations or allies of the former president.

The NBI chief, however, said if they could not file a criminal case for plunder against Estrada pertaining to his acquisition of the mansions, the materials so far gathered by probers could be used as evidence in other plunder charges.

Wycoco said the NBI has subpoenaed documents about the questioned assets such as titles and articles of incorporation.

Workers and security guards questioned by the investigators claimed that the corporations were their employers, Wycoco said.

He also said only two of the four prime lots in Wack Wack subdivision in Mandaluyong City had houses reportedly owned by Jaime Dichaves and Jack Ng, close allies of Estrada.

"With Jaime Dichaves, we know that he figured prominently in the Jose Velarde bank accounts," Wycoco said.

The prosecutors also maintained that Jose Velarde was a fictitious name used by Estrada to open bank accounts in Equitable PCI Bank.

President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. threatened to file contempt charges against Dichaves for insisting that he owned the Velarde account.

Equitable PCI senior vice president Clarissa Ocampo testified during the trial that she was seated next to Estrada in Malacañang when the disgraced leader repeatedly signed bank documents as Jose Velarde.

Last Friday, a group of private lawyers filed another plunder case, the ninth of such charges, against Estrada in connection with the Velarde account which at one time held as much as P3.3 billion, but was emptied on Nov. 13 last year when he was impeached by the House of Representatives.

The Velarde bank account was reportedly opened in September 1999 with only P1 as initial deposit, swelled the next day to P81 million, then ballooned to P3.3 billion within 15 months.

Dichaves and nine other people who contributed huge amounts to the Velarde account, were tagged as co-conspirators in the plunder case, which is a capital offense in the country.

Meanwhile, the militant Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) urged the Supreme Court (SC) to immediately lift its 30-day restraining order disallowing the Office of the Ombudsman from filing the graft and plunder cases against Estrada before the Sandiganbayan pending resolution of a petition by the former president questioning the legality of the Arroyo administration.

KMU secretary general Elmer Labog said the High Tribunal should also junk the petition filed by Estrada’s lawyers led by former Sen. Rene Saguisag.

He said Estrada and his lawyers keep pestering the courts, and this was causing more delays. "This matter will never be settled as long as Estrada remains free and his ill-gotten wealth intact," Labog said.

In another development, a group of Muslims is mulling the filing of counter-charges against Estrada, former Philippine National Police chief Panfilo Lacson and several members of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) in connection with the arrest of 24 Muslims suspected of complicity in a spate of bomb attacks in Metro Manila in May last year.

Amirah Ali Lidasan, spokesperson for the Moro Christian People’s Alliance, asserted that the 24 bombing suspects rounded up by the PAOCTF were not members of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front which was tagged by authorities as the mastermind of the bombings.

"How can they say that those suspects were members of the MILF when, in fact, even their landlady in Maharlika Village where they are staying has testified they were construction workers," Lidasan said.

She said they were conferring with lawyers of the Public Interest Law Office led by Romeo Capulong preparatory to the filing of the cases against Estrada, Lacson and the PAOCTF members. — With Sandy Araneta, Jose Rodel Clapano