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Mancao: Ping ordered Aquino to dig up dirt on Mike Arroyo


MANILA, Philippines – Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson ordered a former police official linked to the killing of publicist Salvador “Bubby" Dacer to dig up dirt on First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, according to former Senior Superintendent Cezar Mancao II. Mancao said Lacson met with former Senior Superintendent Michael Ray Aquino in Miami in September 2003 and instructed him to gather information that would discredit President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration. “Lacson believed that Jose Miguel Arroyo had received millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks and was investing money in US real estate. This was commonly known as the ‘Jose Pidal Scandal,’" Mancao said in a four-page sworn affidavit he signed on March 1, 2007 in Broward County in Florida. The media obtained copies of the affidavit from the Department of Justice. Mancao also said in the affidavit that Lacson "appeared unsatisfied" with the documents on the suspected properties of Mr. Arroyo that Aquino gathered, thus “he (Lacson) asked Aquino to continue searching for various aliases used by Miguel Arroyo as well." No mention of Lacson's order Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, however, denied that Mancao stated in his affidavit that Lacson ordered Aquino to look for Mr. Arroyo's properties in the US. “Never has it been mentioned na inutusan silang hanapin ang ari-arian ni First Gentleman sa Amerika. Wala yan. Never was it mentioned in my copy of the affidavit that Sen. Lacson ordered his men to find the properties of the First Gentleman in the United States," Gonzalez said. He also said that until Monday, he was “totally unaware" of the existence of the 2007 affidavit of Mancao or even a portion in the report that Aquino got documents on the properties of President Arroyo and her husband in the US. “I will not confirm everything there because that will be practically releasing the document. I will not release this until Mancao arrives. And I will not release what I have until there is a new preliminary investigation," he said. According to Gonzalez, he is keeping two copies of Mancao's latest affidavit, one of which is in a vault in a Metrobank branch in Iloilo, the secretary's home province. Innuendoes Lacson has continuously refused to answer media queries about Mancao's claims, dismissing these as "innuendos." In 2003, Lacson accused Mr. Arroyo of maintaining secret bank accounts under the name of “Jose Pidal" to launder money from campaign contributions for the 1998 vice-presidential bid of Gloria Arroyo. The First Gentleman denied the allegations. His brother, Ignacio “Iggy" Arroyo took up the cudgels for him and claimed that he was “Jose Pidal." But Iggy refused to divulge any information about the accounts by invoking his right to privacy during a Senate investigation. Aquino's arrest Aquino was arrested in September 2005 for possession of two of “47 classified documents" described as “blueprint" to topple President Arroyo. He was sentenced in July 2007 to six years and four months in prison for his supposed role in an effort to use the information to undermine the administration. A co-accused, Leandro Aragoncillo, a naturalized American and former FBI intelligence analyst who worked under two US vice presidents, was sentenced to 10 years. Aquino was originally indicted for conspiring with Aragoncillo and high-level national public officials in the Philippines to defraud the US government by impeding its function in protecting classified information from disclosure. He was also indicted for acting in the United States as agent of a foreign government without prior notification from the US attorney general. Dacer slay Mancao and Aquino were among the police officials implicated in the killing of Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000. In his affidavit, Mancao talked about Aquino's alleged involvement in the disappearance of Dacer and Corbito. “I called Viña and asked him if he had any involvement in the disappearance and he told me that he had been tasked by Michael Aquino to get Bubby Dacer. I understood this to mean that Aquino had tasked Viña to neutralize Dacer," Mancao said. Mancao was referring to Teofilo Viña, former chief of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force in the Visayas region. Viña was killed by a lone gunman in Cavite province in 2003. - GMANews.TV
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