So, who’s screwing who in the Senate?

Col. Vic Corpus believes it was stolen. Camp Crame sources say a copy was bought by Sen. Panfilo Lacson for P1.5 million. Purloined or purchased, Col. Mario Chan’s "unofficial report" that Lacson waved to the Senate last week jibes with the "final version" in Corpus’s possession: it confirms that US Customs agents are investigating two bank accounts of Lacson and wife Alice in California alone.

Lacson didn’t read at the hearing the portions that could incriminate him or further taint his image as Mr. Clean. He quoted only a disparaging line that Chan wrote about Corpus’s witness Mary "Rosebud" Ong. And he didn’t read the line in full. He highlighted only that "US Customs officials who interviewed and debriefed Ms. Ong finally evaluated her not to be credible as a witness..." He didn’t continue on to the phrase "...for the time being." Or to the next: "However, they said that they could interview her on a later date to further evaluate her testimony, once Lacson’s bank accounts are identified and have been legally documented."

Lacson’s own partymate Sen. Rodolfo Biazon said, "We are being screwed, only I don’t know who is screwing us and how." He said he will ask for both the unofficial and final versions in the next hearing on the senator’s alleged money-laundering. In the meantime, Biazon and fellow-investigators will have to await the US Attorney General’s documents confirming the existence of Lacson’s accounts.

Chan’s June 28 report already identified two: one in the name of Lacson at Bank of America "with an initial deposit of $18,000 in 1996"; another in the name of Alice in the BofA branch in Van Nuys, California, "suspected to contain an estimated $20 million." Chan wrote that the latter account was smoked out "from the check paid by Alice in buying two luxury sports utility vehicles, Toyota Sequoias, during the first quarter of this year." The first account appears to be the same one that Lacson in early August first denied, then admitted, as having. In denying it, Lacson asked how he could’ve opened a US bank account when he doesn’t have a social security number. Actually, US banks don’t ask SS cards for bank deposits, only for credit cards. Moreover, the FBI has written the NBI to confirm that both Lacson and Alice do have SS numbers, 564-53-7561 and 621-94-4437, respectively, which they use for business credit and a home loan. NBI Dir. Reynaldo Wycoco had shown the FBI letter to senators in an executive session. Lacson has yet to explain the discrepancies between his public statements and the FBI findings, much more the portions that state that Alice has two small checking accounts and two large savings accounts in two US banks.

Lacson also left out another line from Chan’s report – that which states the "discovery of another house owned and registered under Alice Deferio Lacson, located at 2295 California St., (downtown) San Francisco, California." Nor did he quote the other "significant breakthroughs" that Chan listed in his 15-page report, albeit unofficial, against both Ong and Lacson. He harped on the portion where Chan wrote that US Customs officials found Ong’s narratives "to be full of inconsistencies, half-truths and half-lies."

From various testimonies and evidence given so far about Lacson’s alleged heinous crimes – narcotrafficking, kidnapping for ransom, bank robbery - it appears that only close associates and subordinates screwed. For one, Lacson has confirmed that his former PAOCTF operations chief, PNP Supt. Michael Ray Aquino, was indeed caught at the US-Canada border in 1999 with a large amount of undeclared dollars. While Lacson said that the amount was only $60,000 and not $1 million as earlier alleged by accusers, he added that it was supposed to be for the purchase of police surveillance equipment. With that revelation from no less than Lacson, Aquino must now explain why he was buying in cash, a breach of government procurement rules. Lacson refuses to talk about a separate border incident in which he supposedly was caught with $7 million. The FBI is said to have filed cases 99-71223-71 and 99-72078-34, respectively against Aquino and Lacson for the two incidents.

But Aquino is safely in Canada, where he fled with Chief Supt. Cesar Mancao, Lacson’s PAOCTF deputy chief. The two were identified by PNP officer Glenn Dumlao to have directly ordered the kidnapping and killing of publicist Bubby Dacer.

Ong’s Senate testimonies on narcotrafficking focused on Lacson’s PNP-Southern Tagalog chief Dir. Reynaldo Acop when the latter was still head of the Narcotics Group. She detailed how high officers sold to drug traders tons of shabu confiscated in police raids in 1998-2000. No links to Lacson there, except that he was PAOCTF head and later concurrently PNP chief during that period.

Another witness Angelo Mawanay has claimed to have delivered bagsful of shabu twice for Lacson to his friend Kim Wong and Joseph Estrada’s son Jude. But the senators have dismissed and detained him as an incredible witness, and are not inclined to call him back. Mawanay also claimed that Aquino personally executed Edgar Bentain for videotaping a gambling Estrada and Angelito Sy for being too nosy about Wong’s alleged drug shipment. Again no links to Lacson there, except if someone cites screwed-up command responsibility.

Outside the Senate, cases of malversation and wiretapping have been filed against Lacson, Aquino and other former PAOCTF officers. It appears that, contrary to Lacson’s earlier denial before the Senate during Estrada’s impeachment trial, they did purchase wiretapping equipment which they used on congressmen-prosecutors and senator-judges. But that’s far from the narcotrafficking, murder and robbery that they’re talking about in the Senate at present.

One case does link Lacson – to the 1995 massacre of 11 Kuratong Baleleng kidnappers and early-teen nephews. But it isn’t moving because of a Court of Appeals ruling that a two-year period to reinvestigate it has lapsed. It triggered commentaries that the judiciary itself is all screwed up.

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While everyone’s busy watching the Lacson-Corpus fight, a case to declare the Plunder Law as unconstitutional moves largely unnoticed by the public in the Supreme Court. Filed by Estrada lawyer Rene Saguisag – both had voted for passage of the law when they were senators in 1988 – it is being deliberated en banc. A draft ruling is being circulated by the ponente to uphold the law’s constitutionality, but to have Estrada’s plunder case downgraded to mere graft, hence bailable.

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