Senate body postpones probe on Malampaya scam
MANILA, Philippines — The first hearing of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on the Malampaya Fund scam will not push through this Thursday.
Senator Teofisto Guingona III, the committee chairman, said in his Twitter account that the start of the Senate investigation will be postponed to a later date due to the unavailability of a resource speaker.
Guingona said the rescheduled date of the Senate probe will be announced soon.
The senator announced the opening of the Senate investigation last week when his committee issued a subpoena requiring Justice Secretary Leila De Lima to surrender the Janet Lim Napoles' affidavit and list officials involved in the pork barrel scam.
His announcement came more than a month after the release of the committee report on the pork barrel scam probe, which recommended the filing of plunder charges against Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr., among other things.
The Blue Ribbon committee conducted nine hearings on the pork barrel scam. Whistle-blowers in the multibillion-peso scandal also revealed that Napoles got hold of around P900 million of the Malampaya Fund in 2009.
The Malampaya Fund represents the government's royalties from the natural gas exploration project in Palawan.
Estrada said the Malampaya Fund scam could be much worse than the pork barrel controversy in terms of the amounts stolen from government coffers.
He also said that Ruby Tuason, now a state witness in the pork barrel scam, is the mastermind of the Malampaya Fund anomaly.
- Latest
- Trending
