Arroyo’s absence won’t stall Senate probe on choppers
August 16, 2011
SENATOR Teofisto Guingona III, chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, said Sunday that hearings on the anomalous purchase of police helicopters will continue even without former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s husband.
“There are many others who also have to answer for this anomaly,” he told Sun.Star in a text message.
He said Mike Arroyo himself said, through his lawyer, that he is ready to help the Senate in its investigation on the helicopter purchase.
Mr. Arroyo missed the Senate hearing last week, citing poor health, as assessed by Dr. Mariano Blancia, head of the Senate clinic.
Blancia met with Arroyo’s cardiologist Thursday and said that based on medical records, Arroyo is too sick to testify.
Guingona said, however, that it will be up to Dr. Manuel Chua Chiaco, executive director of the government-owned Philippine Heart Center, to determine if Arroyo’s dissecting aortic aneurysm should keep him out of Senate hearings.
Senator Franklin Drilon, a member of the committee, said testimony and documents submitted to the Senate have established “beyond reasonable doubt” that the second-hand helicopters sold to the Philippine National Police belonged to Arroyo.
Archibald Po, owner of Lionair Inc., has tagged Arroyo as the owner of the helicopters. At the hearing Thursday, Lionair Inc. general manager Rene Sia presented documents showing Arroyo’s company, LTA Inc., paid the down payment for five helicopters, including the units the police bought, through a wire transfer in 2003.
Lionair collections agent Edith Solano-Juguan also testified that she collected maintenance fees for the helicopters from LTA. She said she picked the money up at the LTA building in Makati City.
Lionair pilots and a dispatcher have also confirmed that they took orders from Arroyo and from his son, then Pampanga Representative Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, before the police bought the helicopters.
“In my view, there is no way that Mike Arroyo could disprove the fact that he was the real owner of the choppers. If he would insist that he disowns the choppers, then he should execute an affidavit holding Archibald Po and Lionair free and harmless of any liability in the event that Mr. Po donates the helicopters to the PNP,” Drilon said in a press statement Sunday.
Arroyo has charged Po with perjury while his lawyer Inocencio Ferrer has said that Arroyo sold his shares in LTA Inc. since 2001.
The hearings were prompted by a resolution filed by Guingona and Senator Panfilo Lacson calling on the Senate to investigate a P105-million purchase of brand-new helicopters by the PNP in 2009; two of those helicopters had flight logs dating back to 2004. (
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