Luy insists on credibility of his ledger as evidence in ‘pork’ cases

Benhur Luy, the government's primary witness in the pork barrel scam case, on Wednesday insisted on the completeness and credibility of his ledger that was among the prosecution's primary evidence in cases filed against several lawmakers.

At the hearing of Masbate Governor Rizalina Seachon-Lanete’s petition to post bail for a plunder case before the Sandiganbayan Fourth Division, Luy told the court that his ledger, or his daily disbursement report (DDR), contains the complete record of the day-to-day transactions of JLN Corporation with several lawmakers from 2004 to 2012.

The JLN Corporation is the company owned by alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles, who is currently detained and facing plunder and graft charges.

Luy and the other whistleblowers had earlier testified that JLN Corporation has no legitimate business operation but just a front company for Napoles’ transactions with lawmakers concerning the allocation of their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel.

Several lawmakers allegedly received million of pesos worth of kickbacks from Napoles in exchange for the allocation of their PDAF to her alleged fake foundations for ghost projects.

“I entered [in my ledger] the financial transactions of JLN Corporation with lawmakers concerning their PDAF from 2004 to 2012,” Luy told the court.

When asked by state prosecutor Jacinto Dela Cruz on how often he used to enter transaction details in his ledger, Luy said: “Daily, sir.”

Luy recounted that his ledger folder used to be stored in the iMac computer of the JLN Corporation office at the Discovery Suites in Ortigas, Pasig. He said sometime in October 2012, he made a back-up copy of it and several other files from the iMac in his 500-gigabyte external hard drive.

Luy said that aside from his DDR, also contained in his external hard drive were draft copies of vouchers, endorsement letters, memoranda of agreement (MOAs) and project listings as well as several personal files such as his photos and MP3 music.

“It (external hard drive) is always in my possession until I was detained on December 19, 2012,” Luy told the court.

He had earlier admitted that Napoles ordered his detention after she found out that he was transacting behind her back with Pauline Labayen, the former chief of staff of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, concerning the senator’s PDAF.

“When I was rescued by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) in March 2013, I was able to get it (external hard drive) back. I checked it and all the files were still there…Then I submitted it to the NBI,” Luy told the court.

Luy said that after a few weeks since he submitted the external hard drive to the NBI, his counsel informed him that the NBI forensic examination revealed that the files in the hard drive were never tampered.

“Will you say that what was in your external hard drive is a complete copy of what was in the JLN Corporation iMac?” Fourth Division member Associate Justice Alex Quiroz asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Luy replied.

However, in a hearing in another division of the Sandiganbayan, Luy admitted that some of the documents in his DDR were just draft copies and not the scanned copies nor photo copies of the original documents.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/527934/news/nation/luy-admits-some-documents-used-as-evidence-in-pork-case-not-authentic

Luy also admitted that he was not able to encode in his external hard drive some of the corrections noted by Napoles in the hard copies of the original documents.

Composed of over a thousand pages, Luy’s external hard drive allegedly details the transactions of Napoles and her alleged fake foundations with several lawmakers.

Records of the amounts of kickbacks lawmakers, including Lanete, a former Masbate representative, allegedly received from Napoles were also supposedly in the hard drive.

Napoles’ lawyers have been repeatedly pointing out that the files in Luy’s external hard drive were not authentic and may have been tampered.

On the other hand, the NBI has earlier stated that the files in Luy’s external hard drive were “not altered nor rectified from the day they were last saved.” —KBK, GMA News