Legal gamblers

Former gaming adviser Charlie “Atong” Ang is excluded from the list of jueteng operators identified to the Senate by Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz, but is tagged by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago in her own list.

What gives? Ang admitted that he met with Cruz a month ago amid reports linking him to jueteng. The archbishop would later describe Ang as a good source of information on jueteng and jai alai.

The ongoing Senate inquiry into jueteng operations is starting to look like a battle between two groups for control of the lucrative illegal numbers game.

When Cruz invited death threats (and lawsuits) by naming names before the Senate, people wondered why certain notorious personalities and political fiefdoms were left out.

The inevitable speculation was that Cruz got most of his information from one faction – the one whose operators were not mentioned in the archbishop’s exposé.

Ang was let off the hook on the illegal gambling payoffs that led to his former boss Joseph Estrada’s ouster as president and subsequent conviction for plunder. Ang told radio station dzMM yesterday that he was “150 percent” against illegal gambling.

Before you howl with laughter, listen to Ang’s explanation: he does not engage in jueteng but jai alai, which is legal, like the entry of used luxury vehicles, in the independent republic of Cagayan.

After the scandals of the Erap years, Ang is back to doing what he does best: working as gaming consultant of Meridien Vista Gaming Corp., legal operator of jai alai and its derivative, “Virtual 2,” in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Free Port – an area that for years has enjoyed VIP exemption from certain Philippine laws, rules and regulations.

Virtual 2, Ang tells Senator Miriam, is not jueteng.

Probably in line with his consultancy, Ang has been seen these days in the company of another gaming aficionado, Kim Wong, and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s son-in-law who runs the special economic zone.

Neither the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR), which operates casinos, nor the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which operates the lotto, Small-Town Lottery and of course sweepstakes, is authorized to operate jai alai.

So Ang is a legal gambling baron. What line separates him from the jueteng lords?

The hypocrisy underpinning such privileges for a special few guarantees the continued proliferation of illegal gambling and the corruption that it breeds.

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Ang drew national attention for the first time during Estrada’s 1998 presidential campaign, when the gaming expert was caught on video with Erap playing high-stakes poker in the VIP pit of a PAGCOR casino.

Despite the leak of that video, or perhaps partly because of it, Erap won the presidency by a landslide.

The leak of that footage was believed to have led to the disappearance of PAGCOR employee Edgar Bentain, whose fate remains unknown. There was speculation on Ang’s possible involvement in that case.

Ang’s entry into the gambling picture is predated by many years by several of those named by Cruz and Santiago in their jueteng exposés. Like Pampanga’s Bong Pineda, the provincial governor’s husband, no accused gambling lord has ever been convicted and sent to prison in this country.

If we put together the disclosures of Cruz and Santiago, we might get the whole jueteng picture. Santiago’s presentation provided a detailed account of what she said was the daily jueteng take of individuals in several regions.

Perhaps the alleged involvement of the man she believes robbed her of the presidency in 1992, former interior secretary Ronaldo Puno, gave Santiago the energy to deliver her speech on jueteng the other day, even if hyperthyroidism left her enervated.

As expected, there was a chorus of denials from those she named. And as expected, she was asked to prove her accusations.

That demand for proof means we’ve hit the usual dead end in this latest eruption of anti-jueteng zeal – unless other government agencies step in and go after those named by Cruz and Santiago, not for illegal gambling but for tax evasion and money laundering.

Yesterday Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares announced that her bureau would do just that. She pleaded for patience, saying the investigation could take up to a year as it would include peeking into many lifestyle aspects of those implicated in jueteng, including the schools attended by their children.

Let’s hope it will be worth the wait, and there will be no emissaries sent, asking Henares, in so many words, to go easy on certain individuals with friends in high places.

A prominent financial analyst told me, after going through the country’s record in running after tax cheats, that while many cases have been filed over the years for tax evasion, the conviction rate is zero. This is particularly true of major tax evaders. Periodic tax amnesties simply wipe grimy slates clean, and the tax dodging begins again, the analyst said. There are high expectations that Henares will change this state of affairs.

Her boss P-Noy is also saddled with unusually high expectations in delivering good government. The Aquino luster has been tarnished by the hostage fiasco and now the jueteng scandal, wherein some of the President’s most trusted supporters have been presented as villains.

For P-Noy, the worst thing that could happen this early in his presidency is for public cynicism to set in. He cannot afford to have people believing that his anti-corruption stance is just another hypocritical charade when it comes to jueteng.