Facebook page “Pilipinas Today” shared an article claiming that the “billion peso accounts” of Senator Leila De Lima have been accessed and urging everyone to listen to Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II’s answers to the media.
The article shared was published by ddsnewstrend.com. However, it did not contain any text content, just a YouTube video that is over 27 minutes long.
However, a quick Facebook search turned up results that showed that the article was also shared last year, in December and even back in November.
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We watched the entire YouTube video and this is what we heard from it:
- The press briefing conducted happened before Ronnie Dayan was caught, which eventually happened on November 22, 2016 and days before self-confessed drug lord Kerwin Espinosa was set to arrive in the Philippines, which happened on November 18, 2016.
- Aguirre said the Ombudsman refused to file charges against De Lima due to insufficient evidence despite the testimonies of two former NBI officials that De Lima and Dayan received P5 million each in the senator’s house in Paranaque.
- Aguirre reacted to Senator Panfilo Lacson’s suggestion not to offer Kerwin a place at the Witness Protection Program before getting his testimony to avoid suspicions about the credibility of his future testimony.
- Aguirre emphasized that Kerwin was fearful for his and his family members’ lives, considering what happened to his late father.
- Aguirre said that even without Kerwin and Dayan’s testimony, the DOJ has sufficient testimonial evidence vs. De Lima, but they still wanted to pursue an airtight case against the senator.
- As to whether a case would be filed against De Lima before 2016 would end, Aguirre said that he ordered DOJ to consolidate all four charges against De Lima.
- Aguirre was asked about the initial findings from AMLC reports regarding the bank transactions and financial records of De Lima and other drug lords. He said AMLC did reply with factual information after NBI’s first request. However, there was a delay in AMLC’s reply to the second request, which was about the records of narco-generals. The request was made in September but the press briefing occurred in November, the delay of which angered President Rodrigo Duterte, which in turn caused AMLC to act fast in submitting their reply to the NBI.
- One thing that was as close as it could get to the title of the article, which claimed billions of pesos in De Lima’s account, was when one journalist asked Aguirre if the AMLC report, which we found out to have been submitted on November 14, 2016, contained initial reports about the bank accounts that could prove De Lima’s involvement in the Bilibid drug trade.
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Aguirre said that the NBI has not managed to file a request to AMLC, seeing as how AMLC just sent over their response to their second request about the narco-generals’ financial records. He said that he already instructed DOJ officials to file another request about the records of the bank account numbers that high-profile Bilibid inmates/drug lords said were the accounts where drug money were deposited.
“And I’m sure that it will reach billions,” Aguirre continued.
- Next questions were about whether AMLC made a written explanation as to the delay of their response to NBI’s request, whether Aguirre is confident that AMLC would be quicker in their response to future requests, how Duterte remarked that De Lima’s admission of her relationship with Dayan may not have much of an impact on the charges that pointed to her involvement with drugs.
- Aguirre said there were indeed documentary evidence against De Lima from PDEA and CIDG with respect to ‘Oplan Cronus.’
- Aguirre added that the Ombudsman has the primary jurisdiction to file charges against De Lima so the DOJ would send their findings to Ombudsman.
- Aguirre answered a journalist’s question about Duterte granting executive clemency to Robin Padilla, adding that it is final and that the actor deserves it.
While Aguirre mentioned “billions” in the bank accounts mentioned by the Bilibid drug lords, his press briefing was certainly not about what title claimed – the revelation of the billions of pesos in De Lima’s accounts, making it a misleading title meant to get a strong reaction from the netizens.
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De Lima has earlier denied having millions or billions in her bank accounts.
The latest news reports that we could find about the bank accounts related to the Bilibid drug trade were about the Court of Appeals freezing around 160 accounts and insurance policies in 16 banks and other financial institutions that Bilibid inmate and drug lord Peter Co and his associates allegedly used in over P10 billion drug transactions in the past 10 years. The CA order was issued on January 20. Barely a month before, on December 19, 2016, Aguirre said that the NBI received the AMLC report about the financial transactions of people suspected to have been involved in the Bilibid drug trade, although he declined to reveal the details of the said report.
Sources: (news.abs-cbn.com, newsinfo.inquirer.net, gmanetwork.com)
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