Convicts tag De Lima as drug trade protector

MANILA, Philippines - She was fully aware of the illegal drug trade inside the national penitentiary when she was justice secretary and got a total of P10 million for her silence, a high-value inmate said yesterday, referring to Sen. Leila de Lima, whom he called the “protector” of convicted drug lords.

“Protector, ganun po ang dating. Wala po kaming ibang pinagkukunan ng pera (Protector, that’s how it was. There was nowhere else we could get money),” 36-year-old convicted kidnapper Jaybee Sebastian told the House committee on justice at the resumption yesterday of the hearing on the alleged illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

He was replying to questions from Compostela Valley Rep. Ruwel Peter Gonzaga.

Sebastian, who dropped out of college after his third year in Customs administration, also disclosed he “directly” gave P2 million to the former DOJ chief, who told him to leave the box containing the money in the office of then Bureau of Corrections director Franklin Bucayu.

Sebastian said he gave the bulk or P8 million to De Lima’s Presidential Security Group aide Joenel Sanchez between March and May 2015, but which the close-in security categorically denied, claiming he “resigned” as PSG detail in March of the same year.

“Paano po mangyayari iyun? E wala na po ako kay Secretary de Lima nuon (How can that be, I was no longer assigned with Secretary De Lima at that time),” Sanchez said. He revealed in the hearing having passed a lie detector test by the National Bureau of Investigation as confirmed by deputy director for intelligence Vicente de Guzman III.

Sebastian claimed he had raised funds for De Lima’s senatorial campaign last May, but only upon the insistence of Sanchez.

The NBP inmate said he is willing to undergo a lie detector test.

He also claimed De Lima wanted him dead, and that he had never been a government asset, contrary to what she had said at an earlier Senate hearing on the issue.

Sebastian said De Lima’s tagging him as a government asset had put him and his family’s lives in danger.

He said it defies logic that he would allow himself to be left alone at the NBP when all of his inmate-colleagues were transferred to the NBI complex in Manila in December 2014.

“Sa pinagdaanan ko, muntik na akong mamatay, si Secretary de Lima lang talaga ang may kasalanan (What I had to undergo nearly cost my life. It’s Secretary De Lima’s fault),” Sebastian related, noting that it was in the senator’s interest to have him killed – possibly out of fear that he might implicate her in the illegal drug trade at the NBP.

“It’s hard to speculate, but her announcing on national TV that I was an asset has endangered me and my family,” he said. He voiced suspicion fellow inmate Clarence Dongail, an underclassman of convict-witness Rodolfo Magleo, may be behind the plot to kill him.

Sebastian said being tapped as government asset would require signing documents or doing some paperwork. “I’ve never signed anything. Technically If I were an asset I would have signed paper. Logically, it’s not right to call me an asset while I’m still among other prisoners,” he said, as he called De Lima a liar.

Dongail was involved in what was reported as a prison riot, which left Sebastian and several others wounded and a drug lord killed.