NBI to question Land Bank employees

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) will question employees of the Land Bank of the Philippines’ branch in Binangonan, Rizal to determine the extent of a scam that had siphoned off P205 million in tax money.

"Under the law, any person working in a bank must report the transactions even if you are just a janitor. We will investigate all employees of the bank branch with regard to the fictitious bank accounts," NBI Director Reynaldo Wycoco told reporters.

Last Thursday, the NBI received from the Anti-Money Laundering Council the go-ahead to investigate all possible figures in the scam.

President Arroyo and Wycoco came under fierce criticism when they inexplicably presented the whistleblower, bank cashier Acsa Ramirez, before the press last Friday at the NBI headquarters as one of the suspects.

Mrs. Arroyo and Wycoco refused to apologize. If Ramirez "is culpable, I order the NBI to file charges immediately. And if she is innocent, I order the NBI to immediately clear her as well," Mrs. Arroyo said last Thursday.

Wycoco said Ramirez still would have to undergo questioning even though she reported the scam, but he stressed that she is not considered a suspect.

He did point out that Ramirez’s job as cashier included monitoring bank transactions.

The scam involved an irregular deposit amounting to P205 million channeled to four fictitious individual accounts at the LBP branch in Binangonan, Rizal.

Wycoco said money continued to flow into four fictitious bank accounts even after Ramirez had blown the lid on the scam. "Before Acsa, who was involved? We will have to cast a wider net if needed. We cannot just concentrate on Acsa," he said.

Wycoco identified one of the bank employees scheduled for questioning as Ramon Joven, who was the cashier before Ramirez took over last April.

Ramirez’s expose led to the arrest of the bank’s branch manager Artemio San Juan Jr., who then claimed that Ramirez and Joven were involved.

"If there is anybody who should be charged for non-disclosure, it should be Joven and Ramirez who wantonly and deliberately concealed to me the affairs of our fictitious accounts that became the basis of the instant case," Wycoco quoted San Juan as saying.

On Tuesday, Ramirez demanded a public apology and emphatically said she was assisting in the investigation of the banking scam.

"I have been experiencing sleepless nights because of that. I thought I was being presented to the President to be congratulated. I did not know that I was to be presented as a suspect," she said.

Her husband Feliciano, a sales engineer, said he has lost several clients already because of Friday’s fiasco. "We cannot even go out of our house without being a subject of talk."

Asked if she wanted a presidential apology, Ramirez said: "That is up to President Arroyo.

"I wasn’t involved in the scam. I was the one who exposed it," she said, adding that she was too shocked to protest during the whole incident.

The Land Bank union, of which Ramirez is an officer, had earlier issued a statement to "denounce President Gloria Arroyo and the NBI for their error."

The incident involving Ramirez dramatized the potential pitfalls of the new presidential policy of publicly parading arrested crime suspects at Malacañang in a bid to boost Mrs. Arroyo’s get-tough image.

In recent weeks, Mrs. Arroyo has taken to visiting the police and having her picture taken with arrested suspects in kidnapping, drugs and tax fraud cases. The publicity stunt has ensured front-page newspaper treatment for the President.

However, critics said the practice pre-judges suspects who have not yet been convicted of the crime. In court, an accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.