MANILA: The Sandiganbayan yesterday halted the presentation of a National Bureau of Investigation agent who testified on the contents of the whistleblower Benhur Luy’s files contained in a hard disc drive.
Associate Justice Efren dela Cruz, chairman of the anti-graft court’s First Division, deferred the presentation of Joey Narciso of the NBI’s cybercrime division as the tribunal has yet to decide on the motions filed by the lawyers of Sen Ramon Revilla Jr linked to the multibillion-peso Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam.
Justice Dela Cruz ordered the Office of the Special Prosecutor to comment on the motions of Revilla’s legal counsels, asking the court to strike out the previous testimony of Narciso regarding the contents of the Luy files.
The senator’s lawyers also asked the tribunal to cite in contempt Narciso, Luy and his lawyers, and prosecutor Joefferson Toribio after the prosecution camp refused to have all files in side the whistleblower’s external hard drive be copied by the defence.
During continuation of the bail hearing, defence lawyers reiterated their call for the tribunal to end the presentation of evidence by the prosecution panel. They also claimed they could thoroughly cross-examine Narciso if they can get hold of the entire contents of the hard drive of the whistleblower.
Luy’s lawyers earlier told the Sandiganbayan that the defence panel is only allowed to copy files pertaining to Narciso’s testimony. Lawyer Anel Antero, one of Luy’s legislators, suggested in open court that the defence camp could summon them through a subpoena.
So that they will be able to furnish them copies of all the files in the hard disc.
Revilla is facing plunder and counts of graft cases in connection with the P10bn Priority Development Assistance Fund scam.
PDAF is a discretionary fund in the Philippines available to members of Congress. Originally established as the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF) in 1990, it is designed to allow legislators to fund small-scale infrastructure or community projects which fell outside the scope of the national infrastructure programme, which was often restricted to large infrastructure items.
PDAF scam is a political scandal involving the alleged misuse by several members of the Congress of the Philippines PDAF fund, a lump-sum discretionary fund granted to each member of Congress for spending on priority development projects of the Philippine government, mostly on the local level.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR
