Some Aurora bets raising funds from illegal logging?

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga — Some candidates in Aurora province are allegedly cashing in on the remaining forests in the Sierra Madre mountain ranges to raise campaign funds for the May elections, an official of the Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) said.

This surfaced after some local bets, who were not immediately identified, allegedly tried to bribe men of the Army’s 71st Infantry Battalion with P100,000 in exchange for the release of a 10-wheeler truck loaded with 10,000 board feet of illegally cut timber and logs intercepted in Barangay Tanawan in Dingalan, Aurora last Tuesday.

Col. Jovenal Narcise, commander of the Army’s 702nd Infantry brigade, said the soldiers, headed by Capt. Cresencio Mogado, refused the bribe and later initiated the filing of bribery charges.

Narcise said Mogado’s group was manning a checkpoint in Dingalan when it intercepted the truck loaded with the forest contraband at about 2:35 a.m. last Tuesday.

He said the soldiers were escorting the truck to the office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Palayan City when it broke down along the highway in Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija.

Bribe Attempt

"While the truck was being repaired, certain prominent personalities from Dingalan arrived at the site and tried to persuade and even coerce the troopers to release the truck. They went to the extent of (attempting to bribe) the soldiers by offering them P100,000," Narcise reported to Maj. Gen. Cristolito Balaoing, Nolcom chief.

"There have been intelligence reports that some politicians vying for local government positions are behind illegal logging operations (in the mountains) and they transport the contraband to the lowlands to produce money for their campaign activities," Narcise said.

This developed as the DENR-Central Luzon office reported that since last year, 33 cases have been filed with various courts against suspected illegal loggers who had yielded a total of 282,494 board feet of assorted forest contraband worth some P8 million.

In his report to Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Elisea Gozun, DENR regional executive director Regidor de Leon said last year’s anti-illegal logging campaign has brought to two million board feet the total volume of forest contraband they have seized since a massive anti-illegal campaign was launched in 1995 to save Central Luzon’s remaining forests.