NBN-ZTE scandal witness appointed to govt post

A newspaper columnist who testified in court against former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on the NBN-ZTE scandal has been appointed to a government corporate post, Malacañang said Wednesday. In an interview with reporters, deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte announced that Philippine Star columnist Jarius Bondoc has been appointed as a member of the board of directors of the Independent Realty Corporation (IRC) Group of Companies. The IRC is under the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), which is tasked to recover ill-gotten wealth of the late former president Ferdinand Marcos and his family and associates. The IRC is a government-sequestered firm, Valte said. It owns the building in which the PCGG holds office. She could not immediately say why Bondoc was appointed to the position, saying she would have to check with the Office of the Executive Secretary. The IRC's chairman is PCGG chairman Andres Bautista. Other members of the IRC board of directors are PCGG Commissioners Gerard Mosquera and Richard Amurao, and lawyer Roberto M.J. Lara. The five were appointed to the IRC on December 2. Last October, Bondoc told the Sandiganbayan Fourth Division that Arroyo had forced her then Socioeconomic Planning secretary, Romulo Neri, to approve the alleged anomaly-ridden proposal of Chinese firm ZTE Corp. in the government's national broadband network project in 2007. Bondoc said Neri told him this in a phone conversation on April 21, 2007, the day before the $329-million NBN deal was signed with ZTE Corp. The government eventually junked the deal amid allegations that it was overpriced.—Jam L. Sisante/JV, GMANews.TV