THE Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday said it would seek responsibility over the protection of witnesses in the flood control scandal who are currently in the protective custody of the Senate.
While the Senate gives the DOJ access to the witnesses, they “are only allowed to go to NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) or to the DOJ for the fact-finding.”
“But they are claiming that we need to go to this place to get documents. We need to go to our homes to get these documents. We need to talk to some people to strengthen our position. But we cannot do that,” DOJ Undersecretary Jesse Andres said.
“That’s why…we will soon file something formally that once we have accepted all of these whistleblowers as protected witnesses, without according them state witness status, we may be allowed to be responsible for their protection in our safe houses,” he added.
Senate Finance Committee chairman Sherwin Gatchalian said he believed the Senate would “cooperate” with this request “ as long as the whistleblowers can substantiate their allegations.
Andres revealed that the resource persons are allowed access to their own phones.
“We are in the midst of an in-depth investigation and I am very confident that this will bear fruit. In fact, some of the whistleblowers have already surrendered their own cellphones for forensic investigation,” he said.
Gatchalian noted that the public was impatient with the pace of the probes, noting the DOJ’s admission that no freeze order has been issued against the accounts of any politician.
“I do not have right now copies of that. And if I may clarify, I think the freeze orders have not touched politicians. I mean government officials like DPWH officials are already part of the freeze orders,” Andres said.
“I think the public is growing really impatient (with) the investigation,” he noted.
According to him, everybody was investigating including Congress, but no politician’s assets had been frozen.
So, the public is growing impatient. So, we need to really do something meaningful and drastic” Gatchalian said.
Andres gave assurances that they were “following through on the leads given by the whistleblowers.”
“We are pursuing the case, but we are very circumspect about this. We already filed, through the assistance of the AMLC, freeze orders for those we believe should already be prosecuted in court,” Andres said.
“And we have secured six freeze orders already. That includes the officials of the DPWH, some of the contractors, and some of those involved in the kickback mechanism,” he said.
The Witness Protection program meanwhile was seeking a higher budget for next year at P434 million, up from P424 million this year.
