Quarrel between thieves:
Lacson exposes Arroyos' ill-gotten wealth

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

It takes a thief to really know a thief. This became quite obvious when Sen. Panfilo Lacson demonstrated on September 1 that the Arroyo couple has the same penchant for thievery as himself and his godfather Joseph Estrada.

Seven more secret bank accounts containing P168 million stolen by the couple were disclosed by Lacson, in addition to the five bank accounts containing a total of P132 million that he first exposed.

These bank deposits are under the names of "Jose Pidal," alias of Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo (the president's husband); Victoria Toh, the First Gentleman's secretary and mistress; and relatives of Toh. Taken together, the Arroyo couple's ill-gotten wealth so far uncovered comes to P260 million. This is exclusive of accounts that have yet to be discovered both within the country and abroad.

According to Lacson, the amount comes from P270.8 million contributed to Gloria Arroyo's 2000 electoral campaign which was intentionally concealed and left undeclared. The total amount of contributions were said to have come to P321 million but Arroyo reported having spent only P50 million to the Commission on Elections.

Aside from the amounts that the Arroyos deposited in secret bank accounts, some also went into the Lualhati Foundation, a front organization used by the couple as a conduit for ill-gotten funds.

To further conceal the true source of these hundreds of millions of pesos, over P18 million of it was first taken out of the country and later deposited in the bank accounts of "Jose Pidal" from various Hong Kong banks.

Maneuvers between the rival camps have been intense since the secret bank accounts were exposed. On August 26, Malaca�ang personnel abducted Miguel Arroyo's erstwhile trusted aide Eugenio "Udong" Mahusay from a safehouse in Tagaytay City. It was Mahusay who testified that his former boss and Jose Pidal are one and the same person. Mahusay recanted his sworn statement, but the twists and turns in his new story line have only served to further implicate the Arroyos.

In struggling to get himself off the hook, Mike Arroyo made a ludicrous move: suddenly, he presented his younger brother Ignacio and made him admit that he was Jose Pidal. No one, however, took this absurd move seriously.

According to Lacson, who has also been charged with maintaining millions of dollars in secret bank accounts as well as other assets in the US, he is poised to come up with more explosive expos�s and more witnesses against the Arroyos.

Even as plunderer continues to hurl accusations against fellow plunderer, the infighting among factions vying for power is mounting. There are growing possibilities that the Arroyo government will collapse from the sheer weight of the anomalies and rottenness being disclosed, aside from its outright puppetry and militarism. The legal and democratic forces must promptly and decisively take action to firmly lead and advance the people's struggles, define the progressive stand and line with respect to developments and actions, and prevent an equally rotten, puppet and fascist regime from succeeding Arroyo's tottering regime.

07 September 2003
English Edition

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