Fiscals grill Enrile ex-aide on ‘pork papers’

MANILA, Philippines — State prosecutors yesterday questioned lawyer Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes, former chief of staff of former senator and now Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile, on her claim that her signatures on the “pork papers” were forged.

Filed by the ombudsman in June 2014, the case stemmed from Enrile’s alleged receipt, through Reyes, of a total of P172.83 million in commissions or kickbacks from businesswoman Janet Napoles in exchange for the alleged allocation of his Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel to the latter’s bogus non-government organizations (NGOs) during his term as a senator from 2004 to 2010.

During yesterday’s continuation of Reyes’ trial for plunder before the Sandiganbayan’s Third Division, Prosecutor Jennifer Agustin-Se challenged Reyes’ statements that she never signed letters endorsing Napoles’ NGOs.

The letters came out in a special audit report by the Commission on Audit (COA) in 2013, for which Enrile sent a letter verifying the authenticity of the signatures of his staff in the letters, which included that of Reyes.

During last week’s hearing, Reyes claimed that the confirmatory letter by Enrile was never coursed through her and that she was able to reconcile the supposed mistake by meeting with Enrile and the former senator’s deputy chief of staff, Jose Antonio Evangelista, after the letters surfaced in the COA report.

Se asked why Reyes did not write a response addressed to COA saying those were not her signatures.

She also asked Reyes why she did not ask “(Enrile) to retract” the confirmatory letter.

“I did not write a letter to COA because Sen. Enrile (instructed Evangelista to write to COA instead). I believe that we would be given an opportunity to be confronted with corrections given that,” Reyes said.

“I did not and have no authority to tell Sen. Enrile to do anything,” she added.

Prior to the cross-examination, Reyes claimed that a registered document examiner, Rogelio Azores, then 76, issued a report comparing her signature on the seven endorsement letters with documents she previously signed.

Azores, now 85, reportedly found that “based on the signatures I gave him, these were not signed by one and the same person,” Reyes said.

Reyes’ lawyer, Anacleto Diaz, said they only had a copy of the examination report since Azores “insisted on keeping the original.”