Sandigan urged: Don’t grant Bong, Napoles access to Luy’s hard drive

MANILA, Philippines - Principal witness Benhur Luy asked the Sandiganbayan to disallow accused Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., his former chief of staff Richard Cambe and Janet Lim-Napoles full access to his external hard drive which supposedly contains evidence against them.

In a comment and opposition to the motion to cite him and ombudsman prosecutors in contempt, Luy said he is the owner and has the right over the 500-gigabyte storage device entrusted to the National Bureau of Investigation for forensic examination.

Luy, through his lawyers, insisted it is not true that he no longer has rights to the hard drive just because custody of the same has already been surrendered and presented to the Sandiganbayan First Division.

“First, ownership of the hard drive and its contents were never conveyed by Luy to the NBI. Luy merely entrusted the same to the NBI for the specific purpose of conducting a forensic examination thereof,” his lawyers argued.

Luy is asking the Sandiganbayan to allow Revilla, Cambe and Napoles limited access to the contents of the device, particularly to data pertaining to the plunder charge against them.

Luy said there are other data in the disk that are not relevant to the charges against them.

“Some of these transactions are already the subject of ongoing investigations by the Office of the Ombudsman such as the Malampaya Fund scam, while others pertain to criminal cases already pending before different divisions of the honorable court,” Luy said, apparently referring to the separate plunder and graft charges against Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Jinggoy Estrada.

“To allow the accused to copy all the files in the hard drive would prematurely leak sensitive information that may adversely affect the government’s other cases as well as the ongoing investigations by the NBI and the Office of the Ombudsman,” he said.

Defense lawyers earlier asked the Sandiganbayan to cite the prosecution, Luy and an NBI agent in contempt after they refused to allow copying of the hard drive despite an order issued by the anti-graft court.

Ombudsman lawyers agreed with Luy in emphasizing that Revilla, Cambe and Napoles should not be allowed to have full access to the contents of the device because not all of the contents are relevant to the plunder and graft charges filed against them.

On the other hand, Napoles expressed dismay over the Department of Justice (DOJ) decision to charge her daughter Jean with a tax evasion case.

Attending a bail hearing yesterday, Napoles lamented her young daughter is being dragged into the issue.

Napoles said Jean is studying abroad and is a holder of student visa, which means she is too young to be paying taxes.

She explained the properties being attributed to her daughter are not really hers as the same were merely registered under her name.

Napoles also lamented how social media has made fun of her rosary.

She said netizens should not have done that with a very precious item given to her personally by no less than Pope John Paul II.

Meanwhile, the Sandiganbayan’s Third Division yesterday junked Napoles’ request to be excused from attending her own bail hearings.

Magistrates stood firm on their decision to compel Napoles to be present during all proceedings despite her claims that traveling to and from her detention facility in Camp Bagong Diwa is taking a toll on her health because of mental and physical fatigue.

The anti-graft court also issued a decision allowing Enrile’s former chief of staff Jessica “Gigi” Reyes to undergo a medical examination at her own expense.

Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang and Associate Justices Samuel Martires and Alex Quiroz said the accused may undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance angiogram (MRA) of the brain at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) on Monday, Sept. 15.

Reyes asked the anti-graft court for permission to undergo the medical tests after she recently bumped her head inside her detention cell in Camp Bagong Diwa following an anxiety attack.