Philippine senator held over huge corruption scam

MANILA: A Philippine senator who rose to fame as an action movie hero was arrested on Friday, becoming the first politician detained over a massive corruption scandal allegedly involving dozens of lawmakers.
Ramon “Bong” Revilla surrendered following an emotional saga that played out for weeks on national television and highlighted some of the most chaotic elements of the Philippines’ helter-skelter brand of democracy.
“I will go to jail with my head held high, and I will come out with my head held high,” Revilla, 47, told reporters shortly after attending a mass with his family, his final made-for-TV showpiece before giving himself up.
Revilla then traveled in a luxury sedan, speaking constantly to television news anchors on the phone, to an anti-graft court for his official surrender on a charge of plunder.
Revilla is one of three senators to have so far been indicted for their alleged roles in a scam in which lawmakers are accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars allotted for development projects.
Revilla was one of three influential senators indicted early this month for allegedly receiving huge kickbacks from state anti-poverty and development funds. He says he is innocent.
An enduring feature of the Philippines’ tumultuous democracy has been brazen corruption by politicians, a major reason for deep poverty in the Southeast Asian nation of 100 million people.
But the magnitude and number of politicians involved in the so-called “pork barrel” scam has shocked even the most graft-weary Filipino, triggering a giant anti-corruption rally in Manila last year.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III came to office in 2010 pledging to break from corruption in the nation’s past, but few top officials have been prosecuted, leading to criticism that Aquino, himself a scion of a political dynasty, was soft on allies who faced graft allegations.
The government ombudsman, who prosecutes state officials and employees accused of wrongdoing, filed the plunder charges a year after the scam to divert money from the Priority Development Assistance Fund assigned to legislators was exposed. Revilla was accused of receiving 224 million pesos ($5.1 million) in kickbacks. “The evidence against him is weak,” Bodegon said. “He never received any kickback, not a single cent, and he did not get anything from the scam.”
The charges of plunder against the trio carry maximum penalties of life in jail.
But the cases will likely take years to complete, if they ever get to that stage.