The National Intelligence Coordinating Agency has accused the communist terror groups of having collected P5.4 billion from 2016-2018 to finance their terroristic activities and support the lavish lifestyles of their leaders.
NICA revealed this yesterday at the regular virtual press conference of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict which stated that the bulk of the funds came from foreign donors deceived by the Communists into giving donations using issues on human rights and Indigenous Peoples (IPs).
“Malambot ang puso ng mga foreign donors,” NICA Director General Alex Paul Monteagudo pointed out. However, he said the CPP-NPA-NDF could no longer use the same modus here in the country as the Filipinos are aware of the their deceptive schemes.
Other sources of the funds were collected through the Rebolusyunaryong Buwis Ukol sa Kaaway na Uri (RBUKU) or revolutionary tax imposed and extorted from businesses in rural and far-flung areas, Monteagudo added.
The funds were also being used “to support the lifestyle of their leaders,” Monteagudo explained, citing as an example Bayan Muna party- list Representative Carlos Zarate who was using money collected by the CTGs to finance his son’s education in Poland as revealed by President Rodrigo Duterte during his last State of the Nation Address.
According to Monteagudo, a high official of the CTGs has admitted that the CTGs could not afford to stop their extortion activities as these have become an important part of their “livelihood”.
“Hindi pwede. Dahil ito na ang aming pamumuhay o livelihood,” CPP`-NPA-NDF official Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos who headed the NPA National Operational Command (NOC), told Monteagudo during their meeting years ago.
The NICA chief said Madlos continues to head the NOC because of his reputation of collecting large amounts of revolutionary taxes. “Kaya siya naging ulo ng NOC. Lahat ng paraan ginagawa para mafinance ang kanilang operation,” Monteagudo explained, referring to CPP-NPA-NDF’s other schemes to fund their terrorism, such as using front organizations like the Party-list groups in Congress.
He added that the 60 percent of the collected funds were directly coursed to the CTG’s Central Committee based on the testimonies of surrenderees who also revealed “there is corruption within the party”, the main reason why they “surrendered.”
Monteagudo also revealed that they are now looking into individuals who provided support to the CTG’s, including congressmen, governors and vice governors and “even former senators”, but could not reveal their names as of yet as the investigation was still ongoing. The NICA chief hinted that the politicians involved either gave arms like M-16 rifles or rice to the CTGs especially during election periods.
They are also probing 87 companies who financially supported or gave in to the CPP-NPA-NDF extortion activities.
“We will be running after them. We will hold them liable,” Monteagudo said, referring to the new Anti-Terrorism Act and Republic Act 10168 that defines the act of financing terrorism as a crime and providing penalties to the violators.
Meanwhile, lawyer Emet Manantan, Deputy Director and Head of Financial Crime Investigation Group of the Anti Money Laundering Council, said they are now investigating 18 international Non-Goverment Organizations (NGOs) that funded the CPP-NPA-NDF’s project proposals bearing false advocacies with their allied organizations and the party-list groups.
The amount of donations varied from millions of ‘euros’ to thousands of ‘dollars’ based on what the CTGs have asked from the donors. These were remitted through banks and received in percentages.
Manantan said they were able to trace the transactions when the amount of donation reached the AMLC threshold, enabling them to identify the countries where the money came from; determine the bank where the donations were coursed; and the people who withdrew the money.
