FORMER President Benigno Aquino III denied on Wednesday any involvement in the multimillion-peso Priority Development Assistance Fund.
He dismissed accusations linking him to the misappropriation of pork barrel funds of several senators and members of the House of Representatives.
“That [allegation] is very absurd,” Aquino said.
He said it was too impossible for him to have received commissions or kickbacks from lawmakers who had diverted their pork barrel funds to ghost foundations since he was with the opposition bloc when the scam took place.
He maintained that Janet Lim Napoles, alleged pork barrel fund scam mastermind, should not be allowed to turn state witness.
“This person (Napoles) was at the center of all of these issues. She coordinated the connivance as to how the PDAF happened so how difficult it is to think that she could be a state witness,” he said.
But as far as the camp of Napoles is concerned, her lawyer Stephen David said she learned the scheme to siphon congressional funds to fake nongovernment organizations from then Budget secretary Florencio Abad.
Abad, however, said he “never dealt with Napoles in any manner, much less through an agent or a middleman.”
