{"id":64084,"date":"2015-11-03T03:02:48","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T09:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=64084"},"modified":"2015-11-03T03:02:48","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T09:02:48","slug":"amlc-prober-says-former-congressman-valdez-received-money-from-napoles-linked-ngos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/11\/03\/amlc-prober-says-former-congressman-valdez-received-money-from-napoles-linked-ngos\/","title":{"rendered":"AMLC prober says former Congressman Valdez received money from Napoles-linked NGOs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rep.<\/a>
Rep. Edgar Valdez on his way to a hearing. (Screengrab from Inquirer.net’s footage)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013 Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) investigator on Monday bared that former APEC party-list Rep. Edgar Valdez received money from fake foundations owned by alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe concluded, your honor, that the accounts involved in this case received money from NGOs\u2026We were able to trace funds coming from NGOs owned by Mrs. Napoles,\u201d AMLC bank investigator Joeshias Tambago told the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division.<\/p>\n

The AMLC official was testifying in relation to Valdez\u2019s petition to post bail for a plunder case in connection with his alleged involvement in the scam.<\/p>\n

He said based on his team\u2019s investigation, deposits amounting to Php51. 9 million were made to five bank accounts of Valdez \u2013 four with Metrobank and one with Allied Bank.<\/p>\n

He told the anti-graft court that among the sources of the money were NGOs being linked to Napoles.<\/p>\n

He, however, admitted to court that the AMLC investigation did not include the nature of the supposed transaction between Valdez and the Napoles-linked NGOs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe underlying transaction is not part of our investigation,\u201d Tambago pointed out.<\/p>\n

When asked how his team was able to trace that some of the money deposited to Valdez\u2019s bank accounts came from the NGOs, Tambago said that several of the deposit slips have hand-written notations of the NGOs\u2019 bank account number.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome have notation saying this amount came from an NGO. There is no proper form saying where the amount came from, but in some cash deposits the source of the fund was indicated in hand-writing,\u201d Tambago explained.<\/p>\n

Tambago cited as example one Metrobank deposit slip involving the amount of Php499,900, which has a hand-written note of an account number on top of it.<\/p>\n

According to Tambago, when his team traced the owner of the hand-written account number, it was revealed that the account was named under Philippine Agri and Social Economic Development Foundation Inc. (PASEDFI), one of the NGOs allegedly owned by Napoles.<\/p>\n

When asked by the court if his team was able to trace who wrote the bank account number on the deposit slip, Tambago said his team failed to establish.<\/p>\n

Tambago further revealed that one Metrobank account of Valdez\u2019s wife, Thelma, was also used as \u201cdepository\u201d of money coming from Napoles-linked NGOs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat account was also involved in this case, because based on the bank documents we have gathered, that account was used as transferee or recipient of funds from the NGOs,\u201d Tambago stressed.<\/p>\n

Valdez is facing plunder and seven counts of graft for his alleged involvement in the pork barrel scam.<\/p>\n

Based on the information of the case, the former lawmaker received from Napoles a total of Php57.78 million worth of kickbacks in exchange for allocating his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel from 2004 to 2010 to the latter\u2019s alleged fake NGOs.<\/p>\n

Valdez is currently detained at the BJMP detention facility in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in an interview with reporters after the hearing, Valdez\u2019s lawyer Joel Ferrer dismissed Tambago\u2019s testimony as \u201cmerely speculative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSinasabi niya that the money came from the NGOs allegedly owned by Napoles, however, as admitted by the witness himself, he has no knowledge of the underlying transaction\u2026 so he cannot conclude that the money came from illegal activity,\u201d Ferrer said.<\/p>\n

Ferrer added that the PASEDFI was not among the NGOs included in the information of the case against Valdez.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo technically hindi mo rin iyan magagamit as evidence. Because that NGO he (Tambago) was referring to is not included in the case,\u201d Ferrer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013 Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) investigator on Monday bared that former APEC party-list Rep. Edgar Valdez received money from …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":64088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-64084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-original","mauthors-sammy-martin","mauthors-philippines-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}