An inspection of land set aside for a planned law enforcement training facility, not any political calculation, is what led investigators to the New Clark City sports complex, National Bureau of Investigation Director Melvin Matibag said, pushing back against accusations that his agency’s newly opened inquiry is meant to pressure the Senate impeachment court.
Matibag told reporters that bureau officials came upon questions about the Tarlac facility while surveying a nearby parcel eyed for the proposed NBI Academy. What they found in the documents that reached the office, he said, warranted a formal review rather than being set aside.
The complex was constructed for the Philippines’ staging of the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, a period when Senator Alan Peter Cayetano headed the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee. Matibag said Cayetano’s role in that body is a matter of record and does not signal any renewed or targeted interest in the senator. “It just so happens that he is involved…we will always go where the evidence will lead us, what the law is, what the process is,” he said.
At the center of the review, according to the NBI, is a reported P10 billion tied to the project that allegedly went unliquidated. Matibag said the funds were released to a Malaysian company and that the facilities were built without competitive bidding, with the money moving through a congressional insertion in the General Appropriations Act. The bureau has assembled a task force drawing on its Financial Investigation Unit and Special Action Unit, and Matibag said it intends to work with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commission on Audit, and the Bases Conversion and Development Authority.
Cayetano has taken issue with when the inquiry surfaced, arguing that announcing it days before Matibag is due to testify is unfair to him and damaging to the impeachment proceedings. As GMA News reported, the senator used the Senate floor to suggest the planned investigation was designed to intimidate members of the court. His sister, Senator Pia Cayetano, went further during the sixth day of Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial, playing a clip of Matibag’s interview and pressing him on how he could already describe the matter as a major case. “Did he already investigate it?” she asked after the video ran.
Pressed on the accusation that his interest amounts to politicking, particularly after his recent friction with the senator, Matibag said he holds members of the Senate in respect and is not quarreling with anyone. He indicated that if the inquiry requires questioning Cayetano, the bureau will approach him properly. Matibag also said the review of the complex is distinct from the separate matter of the ceremonial cauldron used at the 2019 opening rites, which he said the bureau will examine on its own.
