Mancao affidavit allegedly leaked; Lacson offers no comment

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 11:42 Tinette Panogot

A 16 March 2009 Philippine Star article by Tony Calvento alleged that former Police Senior Superintendent Cezar Mancao had implicated Senator Panfilo Lacson, formerly his superior in the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF), in the eight-year-old murders of publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer and driver Emmanuel Corbito. The information was supposedly contained in the affidavit signed by Mancao in the United States on 14 February 2009, and revealed to Calvento by "reliable sources."
According to the article, Mancao allegedly was a witness when Lacson gave a hit order to then police senior superintendent Michael Ray Aquino, and named both Dacer and former police intelligence chief Reynaldo Berroya as targets.

Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said that although "some salient points" in the affidavit were mentioned in the article, certain details alleged in the article were also not found in the copy of the Mancao affidavit in his possession. While decrying the Calvento report as "inaccurate," Gonzalez nevertheless refused to confirm or deny Lacson's alleged involvement in the murders, as that would be "practically releasing the document already." He also stated that he did not leak the Mancao affidavit.

"I will not respond to innuendoes," Lacson replied in a press statement and reiterated his call to make Mancao's affidavit public. He categorically denied any involvement in the murders, saying that everything was merely part of a smear campaign against him.

"All sorts of lies have been thrown my way - hidden wealth and illegal activities among them - and eventually proven baseless. The Dacer-Corbito is just the latest innuendo thrown at me... There is only one reason for this smear campaign: I have been consistent and unflinching in my crusade against corruption," Lacson is quoted by the Philippine Star as saying.

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Meanwhile, another suspect in the Dacer killing, former Police Senior Superintendent Glenn Dumlao, has also reportedly written a third affidavit, also implicating Lacson, according to Gonzalez. Dumlao had executed an affidavit in 2001 stating that former Police Senior Superintendent Michael Ray Aquino had ordered him to kill Dacer, but wrote another affidavit in 2003 which claimed that he had been pressured to finger Lacson for the killing.

Mancao and Dumlao are scheduled to arrive in the country within the month from the United States where they had been extradited. NBI officials have already gone to the U.S. to fetch Dumlao.

Photo of Senator Panfilo Lacson from the Commission on Appointments website.

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