Lacson’s man grilled on bugging equipment

A former ranking officer of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) has submitted himself to interrogation by a special police team investigating alleged wiretapping activities of the task force that Sen. Panfilo Lacson used to head.

Senior Superintendent Magtanggol Gatdula, former PAOCTF deputy chief for operations, was questioned at the office of the Philippine National Police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP CIDG) at Camp Crame the other night regarding his role in last year’s procurement of a German-made multimillion-peso spying device.

The machine disappeared from the PAOCTF office at the height of the impeachment trial of Estrada.

Gatdula, along with other former PAOCTF officials including Senior Superintendent Glenn Dumlao and a certain chief Inspector Ramos, were seen in video clips while having hands-on training on the sophisticated eavesdropping gadget in Clark Field.

Gatdula initially claimed the state-of-the-art spying machine was not bought.

But the CIDG agents confronted him with the purchase contract which bore his signature representing the PAOCTF and that of a certain Edgar Ablan, president of Armstrack Corp., the local distributor of the German manufacturer.

Records showed that the PAOCTF made an initial payment of $195,945 for the GS-900 equipment imported from Munich, Germany.

The investigators said the amount was taken from a P500-million intelligence fund of the PAOCTF.

Lacson has testified in a previous Senate hearing that the task force which he headed in concurrent capacity as PNP chief never acquired such an equipment. This developed as computer experts of the Philippine National Police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP CIDG) await a court order allowing them to decode information stored in a sophisticated spying gadget confiscated from a former PAOCTF training facility at Clark Field in Pampanga.

"We are doing this in order to have airtight wiretapping case against those responsible for the illegal acts."

PNP chief Director General Leandro Mendoza will brief President Arroyo on Monday regarding the ongoing investigations on alleged illegal activities of the PAOCTF which she disbanded last Apr. 15. – Jose Rodel Clapano, Jaime Laude, Christina Mendez