Iggy asks Jamby to inhibit

MANILA, Philippines – The congressman-brother of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo urged Sen. Jamby Madrigal yesterday to inhibit herself from the Senate’s inquiry into the anomalous national broadband network (NBN) deal.

Negros Occidental Rep. Jose Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo made the appeal in reaction to Madrigal’s disclosure of an alleged National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) document on the NBN contract indicating that one copy went to the President’s husband Jose Miguel Arroyo.

He said the senator “maliciously” linked his brother to the contract on the basis of a “falsified document.”

He said Madrigal should have first verified the authenticity of the document.

“Instead, Senator Madrigal threw caution to the wind and immediately put to question the innocence of my brother in the ZTE issue with the falsified NEDA document as basis. With the bias that Senator Madrigal has shown, there is no more reason to hope for fairness and impartiality in her participation in the probe,” he said.

The document is a letter of former NEDA director general Romulo Neri to the Chinese ambassador in Manila. Madrigal’s copy shows a marginal note on the right-hand top portion stating “Copy for FG 1/F.”

Madrigal said the Chinese embassy employee who received the letter, and whose name is also indicated, wrote the note on the top portion of her copy.

She asked: “Does FG mean First Goon, First Gangster or First Gentleman?”

NEDA later clarified that FG is actually FGI, the initials of its officer who was furnished a copy of Neri’s letter.

Madrigal asked: Why would the Chinese embassy furnish a Neri underling a copy of his letter to its ambassador?

She suggested that the Senate invite the Chinese embassy employee who wrote the note.

At least three witnesses in the Senate’s NBN-ZTE inquiry have linked the President’s husband to the deal. The First Gentleman denies he had a hand in the transaction.

One witness even claimed the Arroyo couple stood to share tens of millions of dollars in alleged kickbacks involved in the contract.

In late 2003, Iggy Arroyo owned up to the Jose Pidal bank accounts holding some P260 million in supposedly laundered money that opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson attributed to the President’s husband.

Lacson and then Sen. Sergio Osmeña doubted whether the First Gentleman’s brother indeed owned those funds, claiming he had less than P20,000 in annual tax payments and was only renting a house in Bacolod City.

When investigated by the Senate, Iggy Arroyo refused to talk about the accounts and invoked his right to privacy at least 25 times.

During the investigation, Osmeña revealed that in 1998, then Sen. Gloria Arroyo and her husband purchased two residential-commercial buildings in downtown San Francisco, California worth millions of dollars.

He said documents covering the buildings showed the Arroyo couple bought the assets “in trust” for Iggy Arroyo who, he claimed, was not financially capable of buying them.

The Arroyo couple was the actual owners of the assets, Osmeña said.