Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. on Friday confirmed receiving in June 2012 a request for P250 million from Senator Jinggoy Estrada to fund livelihood projects for poor farmers in several provinces.
Ochoa made the statement after the deleted files recovered from the hard drive of principal pork barrel scam whisteblower Benhur Luy included a document entitled, “200M_Sexy_Ochoa.doc.” Luy is a former finance officer of alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles.
Napoles ran the scam by convincing lawmakers to fund livelihood projects in agricultural communities through her dubious non-government organizations. Instead of delivering the programs for the farmers, the allocations are pocketed by Napoles and the lawmakers as fat kickbacks.
A check with Ochoa’s office indicated that the request they received from Estrada was indeed for P250 million instead of just for P200 million.
Estrada, a leader of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance, is one of the three senators charged with plunder before the Ombudsman in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam. The other two are Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, also an opposition stalwart, and Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr.
“In June 2012, the Office of the President received a letter from Sen. Jinggoy Estrada requesting funding support amounting to 250 million pesos for livelihood projects for small farmers located in various provinces,” Ochoa said in a statement on Friday.
As of posting time, GMA News Online is still trying to get Estrada’s reaction to Ochoa’s statement.
Among Luy’s voluminous computer files submitted to the National Bureau of Investigation and the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee are draft letters of lawmakers requesting funds from the executive branch.
They also included unsigned letters endorsing Napoles’ dubious non-government organizations as recipients of the allocations.
Under Napoles’ scheme, lawmakers ask government line agencies to release their priority development assistance fund or pork barrel allocations to Napoles’ NGOs through such endorsement letters.
Based on the forensic report on Luy’s digital files submitted by the National Bureau of Investigation to the Senate blue ribbon committee, the deleted document mentioning Ochoa’s surname was created on June 7, 2012.
Text documents with file names using the code “Sexy” were mostly documents involving Estrada’s office.
The Office of the Ombudsman has already recommended plunder charges against Estrada, Enrile and Revilla for allegedly pocketing kickbacks from the massive fraud Napoles allegedly engineered.
The Office of the Ombudsman has already recommended plunder charges against Estrada, Enrile and Revilla for allegedly pocketing kickbacks from the massive fraud Napoles allegedly engineered. —KBK/NB, GMA News
