EDITORIAL - Face the music

Even before the government put a P10-million bounty on her head, fugitive businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles had reportedly sent surrender feelers. Napoles, at the heart of a scandal over the misuse of the congressional pork barrel, has an arrest warrant for serious illegal detention, filed by her relative who blew the whistle on her role in the abuse of the PDAF.

A special audit conducted over two years by the Commission on Audit also linked at least 12 senators and over 180 congressmen to the misuse of the PDAF from 2007 to 2009, mostly through their endorsement of the release of pork barrel allocations to bogus non-government organizations. In several of these transactions, Napoles was reportedly used as a conduit for the fund diversion to the NGOs.

Aside from surrender feelers, there is speculation that Napoles now hopes to turn state witness against the lawmakers who engaged her services. There are questions on whether a privilege normally given to the least guilty can be extended to Napoles, who by most accounts was a principal player in the alleged fund diversion. The best way to find out, as the secretary of justice has pointed out, is for Napoles to surface and face her accusers.

With a large bounty for her capture, and with influential people implicated in the offenses imputed on her, surrendering may also be Napoles’ best hope for ensuring her personal safety and protecting those close to her from having their lives further disrupted. Last week one of her brothers was mistaken for another brother who is wanted along with her, and briefly held for questioning.

Napoles has claimed legitimate sources of her enormous and now questionable wealth. The best way for her to prove this is by surfacing and telling her story to authorities.