Puno admits offers from ‘jueteng’ lords.

Operators used kin, friends as ‘conduits’

By Alcuin Papa, Christine O. Avendaño

MANILA, Philippines—
Operators of “jueteng,” an
illegal numbers racket, used
his friends and even relatives
to approach him about
payoffs, but Interior
Undersecretary Rico E. Puno
said he turned them all
down.

“Some of them are retired

policemen. Some of them are
politicians. Some of them are
even friends. Some of them
are even relatives who
approached me,” Puno said.
“They were used as
conduits.”

Puno disclosed the offers of payola after retired Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said
on Saturday that two trusted officials of President Benigno Aquino III in charge of overseeing
security matters were accepting at least P2 million a month from jueteng operators.

Cruz, head of the People’s Crusade Against Jueteng, said on Sunday that five more officials of
the Aquino administration were receiving bribes from the operators.

In Malacañang, President Aquino said he would ask Puno to explain his statement that he got
feelers from jueteng operators, but the President appeared skeptical that members of his official
family, barely three months on the job, were on the take from gambling lords.

“I’ll call him (Puno) up and I’ll ask him about it,” Mr. Aquino said when asked whether he
would tell his undersecretary to explain what he revealed on television Monday.

Mr. Aquino said the allegations that some of his officials were involved in the numbers racket
came at a time when his administration was preparing a comprehensive plan to stamp out
jueteng.

He said he would not allow jueteng to thrive under his watch.

In his office in Camp Crame, Puno told reporters that a lot of people wanted to talk to him to ask
about guidelines on jueteng.

“I told them that in my job, a lot of people say ‘they already talked to me and that things were
approved by me and they can operate.’ That is what I am trying to avoid. That’s why I refuse
invitations to talk or meet with anyone,” Puno said.

Asked why he didn’t move to arrest the emissaries, Puno said these people did not tell him
anything anyway.

“They asked if they can meet with me. That’s it. I told them I don’t need to set an appointment
because in my view, they will be proposing something which I would never agree,” the
undersecretary said.

Not a violation

Puno said the act of approaching him to talk about jueteng did not mean a crime was committed.
“No it’s not a violation. They were not even offering me anything. They just wanted to talk to
me,” he said.

He said he knew jueteng was the point of the invitations for a meeting because the emissaries
mentioned that they were sent by people who Puno knew were jueteng operators “from northern
Luzon to Southern Tagalog, from Regions 2, 3, 4, and 5.”

“I felt a little insulted,” Puno said. “Because they know how close I am to the President and they
know that if I agreed to something like that, it’s the President who would get hit,” he said. “I just
tell them that is not part of our mandate.”

Go legal

Puno said he told the emissaries that the Aquino administration was taking steps to legalize
jueteng through Small Town Lottery (STL).

“I told them they should go legal, lead a simple life, earn a decent living and that would be fine.
We won’t have any headaches,” he said.

Puno said the Department of the Interior

and Local Government was ironing out the details of the operation of STL together with the
Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), which he hoped would kill the illegal numbers
racket in the country.

List of officials

He also said Cruz promised to give him a list of government officials allegedly involved in jueteng.
“He (Cruz) told me ‘I will give you the list and then you check who is involved.’ If there is proof
against these people, we will file a case. We will start intelligence operations

and gather pieces of evidence against them,” Puno said.

In an interview after presiding over oath-taking rites of new Palace officials, Mr. Aquino said he
would welcome the information from the archbishop.

The President said he could not help but think hard about Cruz’s allegations that two of his
trusted officials were getting at least P2 million a month from gambling lords.

“The P2 million per month, compared to the billions going into jueteng seems such a pitiful
amount,” he said.

P37-billion industry

Mr. Aquino said he learned that jueteng was a P37-billion industry and that it was making a
profit of P9 billion a year.

Jueteng is played mostly by the poor. To remain in business, operators pay police, military and
government officials protection money.

If anyone of his officials accepted payola money, the President said he would see to it that they
would face heavy penalties.

Name-dropping

But the President said he was also hearing that some people involved in jueteng were resorting to
dropping the names of his officials.

Asked whether he thought Cruz was misinformed, the President said he did “not know the
quality of information that Archbishop Cruz has.”

“What I know about it, I’ve read from the papers and listened to TV. At the end of the day, if
there’s an assertion that we are tolerating it, ‘No.’ But we are not gonna embark on a repeat of
what has already failed,” he said.

He said just arresting jueteng collectors didn’t solve the problem.

The President said a comprehensive plan in dealing with jueteng included making STL
competitive.

Before he spoke to Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo about coming out with such plan,
he got a letter from PCSO Chair Margie Juico who told him that jueteng was beating STL.
“So they have seen that STL was apparently designed to fail. So let’s fix what’s wrong there, so
this could be a viable alternative to jueteng,” he said.

Mr. Aquino said he couldn’t help but think that his “detractors” and those wanting to see jueteng
thrive under his administration, had probably heard that Malacañang was coming up with a
comprehensive plan to stamp out jueteng.

He said he talked to Robredo last week and asked him “in coordination with other officials” to
come up with a comprehensive plan.

He said he was not for the legalization of jueteng. “Gambling is not a productive venture except
for the people who run it,” he said.

Congressional

probe

Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said the Palace would conduct an investigation of
Cruz’s allegations if the prelate would provide it the names.

The Senate will start next week its own probe.

In a resolution asking the blue ribbon committee to look into the payola issue, however, Sen.
Miriam Defensor-Santiago said Malacañang’s challenge to Cruz to name names was
“unacceptable because identifying jueteng operators is the task of the DILG and PNP chief.”

In the House of Representatives, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. asked Cruz to identify officials
receiving payoffs from jueteng so that the House could hold its own inquiry. With reports from
Gil Cabacungan Jr. and TJ Burgonio