• Office of Minority Leader Edcel C. Lagman
• 0916-6406737 / 0918-9120137
• 05 August 2011

• LAGMAN DEMANDS TRANSPARENCY
• ON DBP ‘BEHEST LOANS’ WITCH HUNT

         Minority Leader and Albay Representative Edcel C. Lagman demanded the full disclosure by concerned officials of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) of the affidavits which the late DBP lawyer Benjamin Pinpin intimated in his suicide letters he was coerced or cajoled to sign “beyond the truth”.

          The names of DBP officials and investigators must also be revealed together with the identities of the reported 20 DBP personnel who were issued “show-cause memos”.

          The concealment of these affidavits would give rise to the presumption that they are kept under wraps because they contain evidence that DBP zealots went overboard in procuring perjured testimony even as such non-disclosure would confirm Pinpin’s statement that he was compelled or enticed to lie.

          Excerpts from Pinpin’s suicide letters indicate that the proximate cause of his suicide was the extreme pressure he was going through and the inordinate remorse he was suffering for signing affidavits which “destroyed my life” and which were the “biggest mistake of my life”.

          These revelations of Pinpin are akin to a dying declaration “made under the consciousness of an impending death” which are admissible evidence as an exception to the hearsay rule pursuant to the Rules of Court.

          A dying man can be presumed to have declared the truth about the circumstances leading to his death.