THE camp of whistleblower Ramil Madriaga on Thursday claimed that Vice President Sara Duterte visited him twice during his detention at a jail in Camp Bagong Diwa, Bicutan, Taguig City.
In a news conference in Quezon City, Madriaga’s lawyer, Raymond Palad, said the Vice President’s last visit on his client was on Oct. 19, but Madriaga refused to see her since “a group is already helping him in his case.”
Duterte previously visited Madriaga in jail, trying to offer him legal assistance, Palad said.
The counsel failed however, to provide other details of Duterte’s first visit.
He said the Vice President tried to dissuade Madriaga from his intended exposé in exchange for the dismissal of a kidnapping case against him.
Madriaga claimed he delivered large amounts of money to certain people on Duterte’s order, and he formed the Inday Sara Duterte is My President (Isip) in 2020 in preparation for the presidential elections in 2022 being funded by the Philippine offshore gaming operators and drug dealers.
He is currently detained at Camp Bagong Diwa for the abduction of two Chinese nationals in 2022 filed with the Manila City Regional Trial Court.
“I do not use the term ‘aide.’ On my analysis, he (Madriaga) was a trusted ‘alalay’ not officially employed (at the Office of the Vice President) or (officially) in the payroll,” Palad told reporters.
“Based on his statement, he is a friend of Digong (ex-President Rodrigo Duterte), who entrusted Sara to him,” he said.
Madriaga wrote Senator Risa Hontiveros in March 2024, then the House of Representatives’ Quad Comm to seek investigation into the landgrabbing issue involving ex-presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on behalf of the farmers in Mariveles, Bataan, and his role as Duterte’s supposed bagman, according to Palad.
The whistleblower has also asked the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct a digital forensic analysis on his series of conversation with Duterte on his mobile phone, he said.
A group of farmers earlier said people behind the landgrabbing controversy in Bataan filed the “trumped-up” abduction case against Madriaga to silence him for helping them.
In January 2023, Madriaga and 77 farmers filed a case against Roque and his wife Myla Roque for landgrabbing involving a 421-hectare farm in Mariveles after discovering their land tiles were supposed falsified and ceded to the First Bataan Mariveles Holdings Corp., a company co-owned by Myla.
The land was earmarked for a multi-billion-peso township project linked to POGO.
