Ping: Palace playing blind to Pidal case

Presidential hopeful Sen. Panfilo Lacson chided President Arroyo yesterday for "playing blind" to at least 23 pieces of evidence that he claims prove that her husband was hiding supposedly illegal funds.

Lacson was reacting to the President’s statement on Tuesday that the Jose Pidal controversy that brought her ratings down is now dead and that her potential opposition rival in next year’s elections fabricated evidence against her husband.

But the legal counsel for First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo said Lacson was trying desperately to revive the Jose Pidal issue to grab publicity in the light of the attention being focused on movie king Fernando Poe Jr.

Lawyer Jesus Santos said since Lacson has now been shunted aside, the senator is trying to drum up publicity to boost his waning chances of becoming the opposition’s standard-bearer.

"Ironically, Senator Lacson’s failure to substantiate his money laundering charges against the First Gentleman discredited him in the eyes of his fellow oppositionists," Santos said in a press statement issued yesterday.

The opposition had accused Arroyo of using the false name Jose Pidal and the bank account of three persons to hide funds that allegedly came from illegal sources. Arroyo has denied the accusation.

Lacson said the President is playing blind to evidence he has presented against the First Gentleman because she refuses to accept that her husband was into money laundering.

She also refuses to admit that corruption is taking place at the highest levels of her government, he said.

He said among the 23 pieces of evidence that he has submitted to three Senate committees conducting the Pidal inquiry are bank documents in the names of Jose Pidal, Victoria Toh, her brother Thomas Toh and her brother-in-law Kelvin Tan, the three persons who Lacson claimed were dummies of the First Gentleman.

Victoria Toh is the President’s husband’s personal accountant-secretary. She, her brother and Tan have denied they are Arroyo dummies. They alleged that they owned the tens of millions in bank accounts that Lacson claimed really belonged to the First Gentleman.

Lacson said his evidence against Mrs. Arroyo’s husband also included two checks signed by the First Gentleman as Jose Pidal.

One check was drawn from the Pidal account in UnionBank and was dated March 11, 1999, when Mrs. Arroyo was still a senator. It was paid to Velprint Corp., a printing company.

The other check, drawn from the Pidal account in BPI Family Bank, was paid to one Alfredo Fornacio. It was dated May 4, 1988.

Lacson said these documents were given to him by his former star witness, Eugenio Mahusay Jr. before he was "kidnapped" by government agents.

"It is very obvious that I did not fabricate them as the President claims," he said.