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By Ric R. Puod
and Annie Ruth Sabangan, Senior Reporters
(Third of a 4-part series)
RAFAEL T. Engle and Andrew M. Gonzales have
accused Sen. Noli de Castro and his Magandang Gabi, Bayan program of
causing them harm.
These are the stories they tell about their
nightmarish sufferings as a result, they claim, of having been made
to look like villains by the Magandang Gabi, Bayan program.
Because of MGB, Gonzales says, he lost four of
his upper front teeth. He decided to look miserably toothless for
two years to remind him of what he calls “his oppression.”
“I could have had dentures made. Pero tiniis
kong hindi magpustiso. I wanted them to be a reminder of the day I
was mauled by my angry fellow Bulakeños because of an episode shown
on Magandang Gabi, Bayan,” said Gonzales.
He is the national director of the Bagong Lahing
Pilipino Development Foundation, which at the time MGB featured it
was called the East Pacific AAA Foundation.
Gonzales said that days before that MGB episode
aired on February 2, 2002, he had excitedly informed his relatives,
friends and foundation members that it was going to be featured on
the prime-time TV program hosted by Sen. Noli de Castro.
“We were delighted by the thought of being
featured on TV. Pero nung ipinalabas na, nabungi ako sa sapak ng mga
tao sa amin sa Bulacan. Magnanakaw pala kayo, ang sabi nila. [But
after it was shown, I lost my teeth from the blows I got from people
in my place in Bulacan. So you are really thieves, they
said],” Gonzales related.
MGB did not present the foundation to the public
as the image it wants. “We champion the poor people’s hope to
own land and homes,” said Bagong Lahing Pilipino president
Alvincent G. Bersales, who also calls himself Alvin Alvincent
Almirante.
In the episode, MGB told the public that the
foundation had a bogus character. Every member of the foundation,
according to the episode, was asked to pay P200 for a P30 ID, P40
for a livelihood project seminar and P150 for a copy of the “blue
book” or “business proposal.” In return each member was
promised P500,000 for every P220 he or she invested.
Bersales, the episode reported, professed to be
the real Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and custodian of the
Marcos gold hoard, which is where the promised P500,000 for every
member would come from.
But, MGB reported to its audience, since the
foundation started in 1998 not a single member has received the
promised money.
On March 17, 2004, officials of Lahing Pilipino
charged de Castro with blackmail and extortion at the Office of the
Ombudsman. Gonzales had his teeth fixed. “It was actually a
statement. We’ve decided to expose how de Castro and his MGB crew
tried to extort from us. We were put in a bad light because we
refused to give what they wanted,” said Gonzales.
Fixing his front dentures was a symbol that
he—and his companions in his foundation—was putting up a fight.
Before Christmas of 2001 and in January 2002,
Gonzales claimed, two women went to the foundation office in Makati
City. The women, Gonzales said, had been instructed by the anchor of
MGB to talk to the foundation’s officials. “Ang sabi nila
maganda ang foundation namin dahil maraming natutulungan.
Puwede raw i-affiliate sa Kabayan Foundation, headed by de Castro.
Mas makikilala raw kami kung ipi-feature sa MGB sa halagang P3.5
million,” Gonzales alleged.
Bersales, who had the decision-making power as
president, claimed that he refused to take the offer. He said he
told the women he could be helping more people if he would spend the
money for their needs instead of spending it for publicity.
Gonzales and other officials of the foundation
could have just let go of the incident. But much later, they
claimed, they read on the Internet allegations of extortion and
bribery against de Castro.
They discovered that “hindi pala kami nag-iisa.
Marami na palang biktima. Doon kami nagkalakas ng loob na magsampa
ng demanda. [It appeared that we were not alone. That there had been
many victims. That gave us the boldness to go to court and sue,”
said Gonzales.
But to Senator de Castro’s camp, Bersales and
his foundation are the ones committing fraud. “MGB did not
fabricate a story. It gathered information about a scam and a
scumbag. It did so out of a sense of journalistic duty.”
De Castro’s camp also noted that some eight
months after the airing of MGB’s exposé of Gonzales’
foundation, the Securities and Exchange Commission revoked the
certificate of registration of the AAA Foundation. SEC had
found out that it was “guilty of serious misrepresentation to the
great prejudice of or damage to the general public.”
Bersales, however, argued that although some of
the individuals who perpetrated scams had been members of his
foundation, they had long been out of the group. He said he
and his foundation should not be blamed if those people “continued
to fool people by collecting money from them using the name of my
foundation.”
“Our membership was seriously affected when
MGB portrayed us as fake. Nagkawatak-watak kami. [We were
dispersed.] Some collectors [who had been working for Bersales] took
advantage of it. They continued collecting fees but they did not
remit them to the foundation,” he said.
Bersales alleged that there are at least 10
similar groups led by individuals who imitate the propoor ideals of
his foundation, but are in fact into extortion.
Gonzales has another complaint. He claims that
he and other foundation officials have been getting threats against
their lives since they filed the case against de Castro.
Gonzales is running for mayor of San Jose Del
Monte, Bulacan. He said he could no longer campaign there, because
he had lately been receiving anonymous calls telling him not to go
home to Bulacan if he valued his life.
Another person claiming to be a victim is Rafael
T. Engle.
If his reckoning is right, only a fraction of
his long interview with the MGB crew was shown on television.
A furtive shot zooming in on him while he was
putting his licensed gun in a drawer was shown in slow motion. This
seemed to suggest he was a member of a criminal syndicate. This
sequence was given more air time than the message he wanted to give
the public: that he was looking for his wife.
After his video exposure on ABS-CBN’s
Magandang Gabi, Bayan, Engle, who is now 49, ended up languishing in
jail for seven years and four months. Three days after the segment
was shown on MGB on September 30, 1995, Engle was arrested in his
house in Malate without any warrant and was later on accused of
kidnapping his own wife, Daisy Mañalac-Engle.
“I was dining with my two kids that night. . .
I saw men emerging from the stairs. One was in ponytail and armed
with an Uzi, the second was carrying an Armalite, the third was
wearing an NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) cap and had an
Armalite too and the fourth was carrying a camera, an ABS-CBN
camera,” recalled Engle.
Engle did not solicit help from television for
his missing wife. Two days after Daisy disappeared on August 10,
1995, Engle began his search, from her relatives and friends, to
hospitals and even funeral parlors until he had two tabloids publish
the story of Daisy’s disappearance.
Unexpected visitors
In the afternoon of the middle of that month,
unexpected visitors came to his office. “There were four of them.
Their names as I recalled were Yvonne, Cesar, Reggie and Julius.
They introduced themselves as crew of de Castro. I noticed that the
camera was already on while I was entering my office until I sat
down and put my gun inside the table drawer,” Engle told The
Times.
Engle said he evaded some of the crew’s
questions about his marriage to Daisy, particularly the reason of
their separation. “I did not answer them, because I didn’t want
to expose my wife’s personal life. But the way the interview was
edited and shown on TV, MGB took my reluctance for something else.
They had formed a conclusion even before they gathered the facts.
They insinuated that I had something to do with Daisy’s
disappearance,” he said.
Engle told The Times that immediately after the
interview, a crewman of the MGB said the interview was already
“finished” and that they needed “panggastos [spending
money]” supposedly for the segment’s production.
Engle told The Times that he replied in words
showing he agreed that it was but normal for them to have expenses
for the production. He asked them how much they needed. The crewman,
according to Engle, replied they needed P2 million. That amount
startled Engle. The crewman explained it was needed “para po
gumanda ang image ninyo sa presentation [so that your image will
look good in the presentation].” Engle said he flinched at hearing
those words. He told The Times that he wondered why there should be
a need to beautify his image when all his and supposedly the
media’s primary concern should just be to look for his wife.
Engle claimed the crewman did not bother to
reply. He said that they instead whispered something to
another crewman. The first crewman then called someone using
Engle’s office telephone. Afterwards the crew left and Engle
recalled the crewman saying: “Sige po. Tuloy na po kami. Bahala na
po si Sir Noli.”
A stormy love affair
Engle and Daisy had met in a bank at
Mabini, Ermita, Manila, in 1982. “Daisy and I were both
depositors,” Engle said. But their relationship, which bloomed the
following year, appeared to have incurred more liabilities than
gained more assets for him. They became a live-in couple. But, he
told The Times, he left Daisy because he caught her in a hotel with
another man.
Engle claimed that later, out of pity, he
decided to reunite with her. He said Daisy “cut her wrist, had an
overdose and was rushed to the hospital after our breakup.” He
said his wife had a dark past. She had been abused and neglected
“so I figured out that she wasn’t all to blame for her
shortcomings.”
Even their marriage, according to Engle, was not
planned but done out of necessity. “EDSA People Power I of 1986
brought jitters to the economy. There was instability. So Daisy and
I decided to apply for a US visa. Daisy found it difficult to get a
visa. She had no record, she had not yet traveled abroad. It was
easier for me since I travel frequently,” he said.
Engle asked his travel consultant what to do
best so that Daisy could get a visa. “He said we should go
on a honeymoon trip. So we went to Makati City Hall and we got
married. She was 26 and I was 32.”
Who is Engle?
Engle, who like his father studied
engineering, says he came from an affluent family in Tacloban. He
said he was a certified inventor included on the list of the
Philippine Inventors’ Commission. Among his inventions were a
submersible pump which could operate without gasoline, an unpatented
smoke killer and a state-of-the art electric power source.
But he wasn’t just scientific. He also had an
artistic streak. He first became a stage actor in the early
seventies playing Saint Peter in Jesus Christ Superstar, shown on
Channel 4, and an actor in the Broadway musical My Fair Lady. Until
he appeared in the movies and once became one of the leading men of
Vilma Santos.
But Engle had some misgivings about show
business. “It was fun but there were a lot of users and
opportunists, so I had to stop,” he said. From 1976 to 1983, Engle
said, he worked in Japan as an entertainer and English interpreter
for N&B Co. in Tokyo.
In 1986 the couple did not push ahead with their
plan of going to the US. They instead built their fortune in the
country. The couple were lucky in business but not in their
marriage.
In a 600-square-meter lot on Leon Guinto Street
in Manila, the couple built a 25-room pension house, a restaurant
and a sing-along bar. They also had another pension house and
singalong restaurant built on Adriatico Street.
In their tacit business arrangement, Engle
became the implementer, Daisy the administrator. There was one
thing, though, that Daisy disapproved of. Engle wanted to give 10
percent of their income to the Heart of Jesus Foundation, which he
established in 1991. This, Engle said, would help the needy. He said
it could also somehow repay the blessings they received from God.”
Separation
In 1994 Engle expanded their business in Sarawak
Aching Malaysia, where he established a trading firm with the
Sokalingham family. When he went back home the same year, Engle
noticed that their savings had dwindled. Becoming suspicious of
Daisy’s affairs, Engle tapped the telephone line to monitor his
wife’s activities.
“In 1995 I discovered that she had another
man. I heard them on the phone plotting my elimination. So I decided
to file a legal separation. In July 1995 I asked my lawyer to
prepare an adultery case against Daisy,” said Engle.
A memorandum of understanding was also prepared
for the separation of their conjugal properties. According to Engle,
the memorandum was due to be signed by them on August 17 of that
year. But on August 10 Daisy disappeared.
Engle said he discovered later on that she had
withdrawn P5 million from their bank account. He also found out that
Daisy had given a three-month salary advance to their nursemaid and
had told her that she “had to be gone for a while as something big
would happen.”
‘All because of the MGB episode’
Even though he was acquitted last year, more
than seven years of detention practically took away everything from
Engle. While he was detained at the NBI for two months, Engle
claimed a “salvage” attempt was made on him. He also said five
attempts were made on his life when he was finally transferred to
the Manila City Jail.
“All because of that MGB episode used by the
NBI as evidence against me, I lost my family. All my businesses
collapsed. My kids still believe I had a hand in the disappearance
of their mother. I never had a chance to look for my wife, because I
was imprisoned. Who knows, I could have found and forgiven her just
like what I did before for the sake of our children,” lamented
Engle.
On January 24, 2003, a judgment of acquittal on
the kidnapping case against Engle was rendered by Judge Reynato A.
Alhambra of Branch 53 of the Regional Trial Court of Manila. In its
decision, the court discussed the unreliability of the testimonies
of the prosecution alleging that Engle was part of a drug syndicate
and the mastermind of Daisy’s kidnapping.
The court stated that the testimony of Joseph
Lim, the prosecution’s primary witness against Engle, was not only
“full of inconsistencies”; the witnessed himself “lack[ed]
credibility.”
Lim testified that he drove an L300 van used for
the kidnapping of Daisy. The van, according to Lim, had been used in
drug trafficking before the kidnapping. But Judge Alhambra pointed
out that “it was highly improbable that the van was ever used”
in the alleged kidnapping.
The court stated that records showed the van was
stolen from the garage of Mr. and Mrs. Emmanuel and Marujita
Palabrica in Parañaque on July 11, 1995. Atty. Palabrica reported
to the police that his checkbook, a pair of shoes and a wall clock
were inside the trunk of the van when it was stolen.
On July 15 the van figured in a collision with
another car owned by one Romeo Ramos at Ilagan, Isabela. At the time
the driver of the van was Lim, who settled the case by issuing a
check worth P20,000 owned by Palabrica.
Because Palabrica had closed his checking
account the same day he reported to the police about the stolen car,
the check issued by Lim bounced.
Palabrica did not bother to recover the van,
because of its damaged condition and just collected its insurance.
Doubtful
On July 12 and 20 an alarm for the arrest of Lim
and the confiscation of the van was flashed by the Traffic
Management Command. “There is serious doubt that the L300 van,
despite the flash alarm for its confiscation, would have traveled
freely through the major highways like the Maharlika Highway, which
connects Samar to Northern Luzon, without being detected by several
checkpoints through which the van allegedly traversed on the day of
the kidnapping,” noted Alhambra.
What was clear, according to the judge, was that
Lim, supposedly an accomplice of Engle, was arrested by the Aritao
police in Nueva Vizcaya on August 11, 1995, for having driven away
without paying the fuel pumped into the tank of the van.
The judge also pointed out that although other
members of the alleged criminal syndicate were named by the
prosecution, it did not charge any one of them except Engle.
Charging them could have substantiated the claim of Lim that such a
group was engaged in drug trafficking in Catbalogan, Samar.
The court also questioned the prosecution’s
attempt to include Palabrica as part of the syndicate when the
“evidence showed that [he] himself was a victim of Lim’s
criminal activities.”
Lim’s narration of the date of the
syndicate’s arrival and activities in Manila before eventually
kidnapping Daisy “did not conform to the date of [her] actual
disappearance,” Alhambra further noted.
Prosecution witness Joel Niegas testified that
he last saw Daisy in the early morning of August 10. Two other
witnesses, from the prosecution and the defense, corroborated Niegas’
testimony. However, Lim’s testimony did not concur with the other
well-established testimonies, because his narration showed that the
kidnapping occurred a day later than the actual disappearance of
Daisy.
A frame-up victim
A tabloid reporter who wrote a series about the
Engle kidnapping, presented by the prosecution as a hostile witness,
had the impression that Engle was framed by the NBI and that Lim was
a fake witness used to give damning statements that would point to
Engle as the mastermind in the kidnapping of his wife.
Engle believed he was indeed framed. He said
this did not appear in the MGB episode. “The bad image painted of
me by that wicked, terrible and biased episode of MGB is a complete
falsehood, because I did not kidnap my wife and I certainly am not a
member of any criminal syndicate. Clearly, my refusal to pay Mr. de
Castro and his crew P2 million they tried to extort from me earlier
led to this episode,” Engle said in his recent sworn statement.
Most of those whom Engle suspected of being
behind the frame-up—NBI director Federico Opinion, bureau lawyer
Ali Vargas and Delia Morales, Daisy’s mother—have all died of
sickness. “They’re all dead except for de Castro,” said Engle.
De Castro’s camp denied Engle’s allegations.
On April 5 the vice-presidential candidate filed a P200-million
libel suit against Engle and another of his accusers, Andrew M.
Gonzales. De Castro denied Engle’s accusations, stressing that the
MGB episode, which was not about Engle but about his wife, was “a
fair and balanced report.”
“Daisy Engle, we believe, was kidnapped by
rogues connected to a drug syndicate,” de Castro noted in a
statement.
On April 21 Engle, accompanied by the running
priest Robert Reyes, filed a P150-million moral damage suit against
de Castro at the Manila Regional Trial Court. Engle claimed in the
civil case that he was unjustly imprisoned for seven years due to a
“baseless and malicious” segment in MGB.
De Castro claimed Engle might be one of those
used by dirty politicians to malign his candidacy. He also
questioned the timing of Engle’s accusation. He asked why it took
Engle more than eight years to come out with his accusations.
De Castro also noted that although Engle had the
opportunity to communicate with other people while in detention,
“he never mentioned to anyone . . . anything about the alleged
extortion and blackmailing scheme supposedly engineered by me and
carried out by the MGB team.”
But Engle continues to claim, whether rightly or
wrongly, that he was victimized by a man who might soon hold the
country’s second highest position.
“I cry for justice and there is no better time
than now for people to know about it.”
(Part 4: Kabayan Noli, a man of
virtues)
Part 1 |Part
2 |Conclusion |
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