8 former PAOCTF officials face probe

Seven senior police officials and an Army colonel are facing investigation in connection with alleged wiretapping activities of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) under the watch of Sen. Panfilo Lacson as chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

Those who will be placed on the carpet are Chief Superintendent Francisco Zubia, Senior Superintendents Michael Ray Aquino and Magtanggol Gatdula, Superintendents Glenn Dumlao and Dennis Agaram, Chief Inspectors John Lopez and Steve Ludan, and Army Col. Dioscoro Reyes, all former officials of the PAOCTF.

Chief Superintendent Nestorio Gualberto, head of the PNP’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said material and documentary evidence now in their possession clearly indicated that Lacson, who headed the PAOCTF in concurrent capacity, and his men lied in a Senate inquiry and in various media interviews by saying that they did not procure sophisticated bugging devices.

Dean Edgar Ablan and Gertrudes de Leon, executives of Armstrack Corp., linked Lacson and his men to the purchase of a GS-900 state-of-the-art spy machine.

Armstrack is the local representative of Rhode and Schwarz based in Munich, Germany which sold the device to the PAOCTF.

Ablan and De Leon were apprehended along with four other people in a police raid on a suspected PAOCTF "listening post" in Pasig City last week.

Ablan and De Leon allegedly tried to resell the machine to police undercover agents posing as buyers.

Gatdula, whose signature appeared on the purchase contract for the GS-900, submitted himself to interrogation by the CIDG on the matter.

Gualberto said Lacson, Zubia, Aquino, Gatdula and Reyes flew to Germany sometime in June 1999 to inspect the machine they intended to buy.

Ablan and De Leon reportedly left with Gatdula and Reyes on June 9, while Lacson, Aquino and Zubia followed the next day for the "functional testing" of the GS-900 telephone interceptor and the digital directional finder (DDF).

Records showed that a certain Chief Inspector Lopez, former head of the PAOCTF’s logistics division, and his deputy, Ludan, paid $195,934 partial payment for the machines, taken from the task force’s P500-million intelligence fund.

In a Jan. 6, 1999 memorandum to Lacson, Reyes, who was chief of the PAOCTF’s technical division, justified the procurement of the machines by saying it would be "very helpful in our current thrust against the global problem of drug abuse."

Lacson approved the recommendation. In a marginal note in his own handwriting, Lacson said: "Ok. We can use portion of the P0.5-B intel fund."

Seized documents showed that Dumlao led a team of selected PAOCTF agents who trained on the use of the newly acquired spy machines at the Armstrack facility at Clark Field in Pampanga on May 15 last year.

Rhode and Schwarz representatives Erwin Oberbuchner and Hinker Guenter supervised the hands-on training and distributed certificates of completion to the participants.

A team under Agaram fetched the shipment from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on April 22, 2000, or six days after its arrival.

Ablan and De Leon said they had to take the machines out of the PAOCTF for safekeeping at the height of former President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial.