PNP to press perjury, wiretap raps versus Lacson,

Police investigators believe they finally have the goods on Sen. Panfilo Lacson and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF).

Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Leandro Mendoza said they are poised to file wiretapping and perjury charges against Lacson and 20 other former PAOCTF officials either today or tomorrow.

The PNP is also preparing cases of graft and corruption and malversation of public funds against Lacson’s group in connection with the purchase of a GS-900 mobile phone interceptor and a digital directional finder that were seized in a raid on a training facility at Clark Field in Pampanga last week.

The perjury suit stems from the testimony of Lacson and his men at a Senate hearing where they said they never bought sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment for the PAOCTF.

Senior Superintendent Reynaldo Berroya, police director for Central Luzon, said the PNP has tapped computer experts from Hong Kong and Singapore to assist local investigators in conducting a so-called "computer autopsy" in a bid to retrieve deleted files on the seized spy gadgets.

The computer autopsy is meant to establish the names of the individuals bugged by the PAOCTF.

Initial inspection of the GS-900 indicated that several folders and files have been erased, making it impossible to establish the names of the bugging targets without the use of the computer autopsy.

Those facing wiretapping charges, apart from Lacson, were 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 defunct PAOCTF.

Gatdula, who signed the purchase contract on behalf of the PAOCTF, maintained, however, that the confiscated GS-900 was not bought by the task force.

"This contract was even negotiated and revised in February 2000 because despite PAOCTF’s release of the required 30 percent down payment, Armstrack failed to comply with its obligations under the contract," Gatdula said.

He also claimed that the machine was not suitable to local conditions.

He added that the task force did not pursue the purchase of the device after a series of testings showed that it did not meet PAOCTF’s operational requirements.

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 arrested, 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.

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."

Captured documents showed that Dumlao led a team of selected PAOCTF operatives who trained on the use of the newly acquired spy machines at the Armstrack facility in Clark Field 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.