Arroyo brothers a no-show at ‘Pidal’ probe

First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo and younger brother Ignacio or Iggy failed to attend yesterday’s new Senate inquiry into allegations that President Arroyo’s husband laundered about P260 million using the false name Jose Pidal and dummies.

The First Gentleman sent his lawyer, Jesus Santos, to submit to the committee on banks and financial institutions, and the committee on constitutional amendments and revision of codes and laws a medical certificate showing that he was sick.

Meanwhile, administration Sen. Robert Barbers said yesterday the resumption of the investigation into the controversial Jose Pidal account is an "exercise in futility" intended to discredit the President, who is running for another term in May.

Barbers described the joint committee investigation as just a "repetition" of the investigation conducted by the Blue Ribbon Committee and whose purpose was "purely politics" to discredit Mrs. Arroyo.

At the House, administration congressmen said the absence of Sen. Panfilo Lacson in today’s reopening of the Pidal inquiry and his failure to present hard evidence on his money laundering charges against Mr. Arroyo reinforced the fact that the inquiry was a "political stunt" to boost Lacson’s lagging campaign for the presidency.

The medical certificate, dated last Wednesday, was signed by Capt. Michico Berin of the Presidential Security Group Station Hospital at Malacañang.

Berin said he examined the President’s husband and diagnosed him to have "acute bronchitis and hypertension."

He said the First Gentleman needed medication, which he prescribed, and would have to rest for four to seven days.

As for Ignacio Arroyo, who had claimed he is Jose Pidal, Senate process servers were told that he was out of the country when they served a subpoena for him at the Arroyo family’s LTA building in Makati City where he and the President’s husband are holding office.

After yesterday’s hearing, Iggy Arroyo called Sen. Sergio Osmeña, chairman of the committee on banks and financial institutions, to tell him that he was in his district in Negros Occidental where he is running for congressman.

Before Osmeña could invite him to the next hearing next week, the line went dead.

Osmeña said the Senate would again issue subpoenas to the Arroyo brothers for them to attend the next hearing.

Sen. Edgardo Angara, chairman of the committee on constitutional amendments and revision of codes and laws, said if Mr. Arroyo and his brother are trying to stay away from the new inquiry, it would mean that they are hiding something.

"They ought to be transparent on this," he said.

Three other witnesses summoned by the hearing panels also fell sick on the same day that the First Gentleman went to the PSG hospital.

They are airport manager Edgardo Manda, who is confined at the Medical City in Pasig City supposedly for a kidney ailment; Arnold Tagle, who checked into the St. Luke’s Hospital for chest pains and hypertension, and Erwin Lapuz, who entered the FEU Hospital for rectal bleeding.

Manda used to manage funds for one of the Arroyo couple’s foundations. Tagle and Lapuz, who are with the UnionBank branch on Perea street in Makati City not far from the Arroyos’ LTA building on the same road, were invited to shed light on the Pidal deposits in their branch.

"Why are people suddenly ill?" Osmeña asked, noting that four of the witnesses fell sick.

During the hearing, Osmeña and Angara confronted officials of the Philippine National Police Crime Laboratory with their own findings and documents on the specimen signatures of Iggy Arroyo as Jose Pidal.

Osmeña said the officials submitted to the hearing panels two documents containing different sets of signatures.

"One set contains the specimen signatures of Jose Miguel Arroyo as the real Jose Pidal, and the other contains the signatures of Ignacio Arroyo pretending to be Jose Pidal," he said.

He said even a layman not trained in handwriting examination would notice the differences in the two sets of signatures.

However, Dr. Mely Sorra, head of the crime laboratory’s questioned document division, insisted that the allegedly different signatures came from one and the same person, Iggy Arroyo.

She said she saw the First Gentleman’s brother sign two forms last Sept. 1 when he went to Camp Crame to have his signatures examined and compared to those on documents that Senator Lacson presented in his Jose Pidal-Incredible Hulk exposé.

But GMA-7 broadcaster Arnold Clavio, who accompanied Iggy Arroyo to the PNP crime laboratory, testified that he saw Mr. Arroyo’s brother sign only one signature examination form.

When Osmeña showed him the two documents containing two different sets of signatures, Clavio said he was not sure which of the signatures were those of Iggy Arroyo, whom he earlier interviewed when Arroyo claimed he was Jose Pidal. Arroyo even signed as Jose Pidal in front of the broadcaster. — With Jose Rodel Clapano