Juan Ng

A new character has just been added to our ever colorful and always exciting political landscape. In the tradition of Jose Velarde and Jose Pidal  the name Juan Ng has been been added, an interesting -- and very likely, worthy -- addition to the political pantheon of personalities so ultra rich they leave behind questions in their wake.

‘Juan Ng’, according to the Anti-Money Laundering Council, is suspiciously a dummy for Senator Jinggoy Estrada under whose name the hundreds of millions in kickbacks from the pork barrel scam had been deposited. The AMLC’s suspicions grew out of a very elementary observation: the signatures of Estrada and that of Ng are suspiciously similar to each other.

‘Juan Ng’ comes years after Jose Pidal and Jose Velarde hogged headlines in the political scene. Jose Pidal, of course, turned out to be former congressman Iggy Arroyo, who rose out of the woodwork to claim money stashed in the banks that were suspected to belong to his brother, former First Gentleman.  Velarde was allegedly the dummy for former President Joseph Estrada, the senator’s father and pundits are having a heyday about this father-and-son-employing-the-same-tactics-tale.

As a cover, Jose Velarde was blown with the testimony of banker Clarissa Ocampo, when she came forward to proclaim it was the President who had signed the signature cards as “Jose Velarde.” Interestingly, she had come close to the President when he signed the cards because he had asked her to come into the room where he was, because he was told she had nice and shapely legs.

That testimony had struck the worst blow on the Estrada presidency and we can thank Ocampo’s legs for the survival of Philippine democracy. Otherwise, how could Estrada have been pinned down and called to task for his sins had he not  been lured into inviting Ocampo into his inner sanctum where he accidentally revealed himself as Jose Velarde?

Pidal was an interesting case. He got away with it, did he not? There was nothing that can dispute his claims, aside from circumstantial evidence only we Negrenses were privy to. Having seen the lifestyle of the former congressman who was simply renting the house he lived in before his sister-in-law became President, we could not quite believe he was the same  Pidal who was caught with enormous amounts of money in the banks.

Now here comes Juan Ng. Does he even exist? The senator’s camp says he is a business man who supplies steel for construction and he could very well justify the hundreds of millions in his name that AMLC has discovered.

Well, all that Estrada can do now is to present Ng and show he is indeed the legitimate owner of the money found in his name. It is as simple as that: Ng proves he is rich and he made his wealth properly and we can rest this particular allegation against Jinggoy.

Should Ng succeed in doing that, our other government agencies concerned, such as  the Bureau of Internal Revenue should come in, too, and see if he is paying the correct taxes on that wealth.

Of course there are other charges related to the pork barrel scam that the Ombudsman has brought against Estrada, aside from the Juan Ng discoveries. There are also deposits in Estrada’s name himself, that are allegedly linked to pork barrel queen Janet Lim Napoles, and these, Jinggoy still has to explain. There couldn’t be two or three Jinggoy Estradas, ‘no?*

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