Ex-Piatco chief pleads not guilty

An official of the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (Piatco) indicted in the Sandiganbayan pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that he conspired with transport officials in signing an allegedly onerous contract for the building of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA-3).

Henry Go, former president and chairman of Piatco, the private firm that helped build NAIA-3, said he was innocent of graft charges that remain pending in the anti-graft court’s fifth division.

He was forced to undergo arraignment after justices ruled that the absence of his co-accused, former transportation secretary Vicente Rivera, does not preclude the Sandiganbayan from pushing through with proceedings.

Go managed, however, to reset to April 28 a second arraignment in another sala, for the same offense but for another count. He told the fourth division that he wanted his three graft cases in three separate divisions to be consolidated.

Justices of the fifth division headed by Ma. Christina Cortez-Estrada held that Rivera’s medical treatment in the US should not hamper Go’s scheduled arraignment. Rivera’s lawyer has promised to produce his client when he arrives on April 25.

Another accused, Cheng Yong, incumbent Piatco president and chairman, has asked the first division to allow him to travel abroad again, this time to Osaka, Japan, where he is to attend a three-day business conference from April 11-14.

Last February, Cheng was allowed to attend a conference of a group of Chinese businessmen in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He left late February after postings a P30,000 travel bond and returned to the country early this month.

Go, Cheng and Rivera are among the 10 defendants in the Piatco case, wherein three former Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) secretaries and a few other officials allegedly entered into contracts that were disadvantageous to the government.

Prosecutors held former DOTC secretaries Rivera, Wilfredo Trinidad, Pantaleon Alvarez, Undersecretary Primitivo Cal, and bids and awards committee vice chairman Francisco Atayde criminally liable for granting benefits to Piatco at the government’s expense.

NAIA-3 had been set to open in the middle of this year after several deferments due to controversies hounding the $465-million project.

Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon Victor Fernandez, who approved the indictments, also included several Piatco officials in the suit, led by presidents Go, Cheng, director Hans Vogel and consultants Alfredo Liongson and Bernd Struck.

Government prosecutors said DOTC officials had taken advantage of their position in granting Paircargo Consortium, later renamed Piatco, "unwarranted benefits" from July 1997 to June 2001. — With Jose Rodel Clapano