Whistle-blower Lozada finally going home

MANILA, Philippines - He’s finally going home.

Whistle-blower Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. would finally be leaving the custody of the religious with hopes of leading a normal life.

Lozada said the nuns who had taken care of him and his family would hold a farewell Mass for him today at La Salle Greenhills in San Juan.

Lozada said he would deliver a statement to express his gratitude to those who had helped him during the time when his life was at risk for exposing anomalies in the national broadband network (NBN) deal between the Arroyo administration and Chinese firm ZTE Corp.

“After almost three years, finally we are going back home,” Lozada told The STAR.

Lozada, a former government consultant and chief executive officer of the state-run Philippine Forest Corp., made headlines when he agreed to testify and confirm the allegations made by businessman Jose de Venecia III in exposing the anomalous NBN-ZTE deal.

Lozada implicated the former president’s husband Jose Miguel Arroyo and former elections chief Benjamin Abalos as the principal players in the grossly overpriced contract with ZTE.

His testimony at the Senate during the inquiry over the deal made phrases like “moderate their greed” and “bubukol po ito” household terms.

Lozada served as a technical consultant to former socioeconomic planning secretary Romulo Neri, another principal player in the controversial deal.

Lozada left the country hours before a Jan. 30 Senate hearing in 2008 that he was supposed to attend. This prompted senators to issue a warrant of arrest against him.

When he returned to the country a few days later, the Senate was not able to get him as he was taken away by alleged gunmen said to be operatives of the Presidential Security Group of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

In a petition seeking his release filed before the Supreme Court, his wife Violeta had claimed he was taken into police custody against his will.

Since then, with threats to his life, Lozada has been in the custody of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines and has been residing with the La Salle brothers.