De Lima dares Napoles: Return ill-gotten wealth

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Leila de Lima has challenged alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles to return all of the illegally acquired wealth she had accumulated from her past dealings with legislators.

De Lima has questioned the credibility of Napoles as a witness based on her previous experience with the businesswoman when she was justice secretary during the previous administration.

De Lima said that even then, Napoles appeared to be the guiltiest in the scam, which involved the funneling of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) of senators and congressmen to the bogus non-government organizations and people’s organizations that she created.

“When we asked her to identify legislators, she asked us instead who among the senators and congressmen we wanted included in her PDAF list of clients. That was when I knew that Napoles cannot be relied upon and was only too willing to fabricate her own testimony to save her skin at the expense of innocent senators and congressmen,” De Lima recalled.

Under the current administration, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II is considering tapping Napoles as a state witness in the reopening of the pork barrel scam probe.

“Mr. Aguirre is making a tempting offer for Napoles that is too hard to resist, that is to tell everything she knows against the expanded list of suspects in the pork barrel fund scam in exchange of her security, survival or political concessions,” De Lima said yesterday.

“If this government really sees her as a credible state witness because it thinks she is a ‘minimal player’ in the multibillion- pork barrel fund scam, I challenge Napoles to return the wealth she has acquired from all her illegal transactions,” she added.

Napoles has claimed that inheritance and a profitable coal mining business accounted for her family’s wealth.

At the time that the scam broke out, Napoles reportedly owned several houses and condominium units in at least seven prime locations, including properties in the United States worth close to P500 million.

De Lima noted that instead of relying on the testimony of Napoles, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and state prosecutors during her time as justice secretary went with testimonial and documentary evidence provided by Benhur Luy and other whistleblowers who were once employees of Napoles.   – With Edu Punay, Elizabeth Marcelo