'Pork-barrel' suspect surrenders
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Fearing for her life, fugitive Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged brains behind the US$229-million (Bt7.4 billion) "pork barrel" scam, surrendered to Philippine President Benigno Aquino III in Camp Crame Wednesday night, the Palace announced.
Napoles’s surrender pre-empted the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Special Task Force, which had hunted her down and was poised to make an arrest.
The president also met with Napoles’s husband, Jimmy, but the media was barred from the meeting.
Napoles, together with her brother Reynald Lim, went into hiding before authorities could serve arrest warrants on them on August 15 in connection with the alleged kidnapping of the businesswoman’s aide and cousin Benhur Luy.
Luy and other former staff of Napoles blew the whistle on her siphoning of 10 billion pesos (Bt7.2 billion) in public Priority Development Assistance Funds into kickbacks by Napoles and her company using dummy foundations, bogus beneficiaries and forged signatures.
In a radio interview, Kapunan said her client surrendered out of fear of her life.
“There are really people who want to keep her silent permanently,” Kapunan said.
Public outrage, fanned by newspaper and state auditors’ reports over misuse of the fund at the disposal of lawmakers, climaxed in a mammoth rally in Manila on Monday.
The president last Friday announced the abolition of the “pork barrel” fund.
