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The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that the Philippine Bureau of Customs has filed charges that Oillink, an import company, cheated the government out of 700 million Philippine pesos (16 million US dollars). The Bureau of Customs discovered the fraud through an anonymous letter, apparently from a disgruntled employee. In a column, Raul Palabrica says, "It takes a lot of guts for a person to provide inside information to the authorities that could lead to the imprisonment of the people he once worked with or whose table he may have shared on several occasions." "And once the whistle is blown, there is no assurance that the whistle-blower will not be caught in the maelstrom that his action may have caused," Palabrica adds. He also comments on the predicament of UBS whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld.  Birkenfeld's disclosures, he says,

resulted in the rest of the safe banking havens based in Lichtenstein, Cayman Islands and other exotic places into doing something similar under pain of being accused of money laundering and blacklisted in the international banking community.

So you think the whistle-blower was declared a hero for initiating the action that practically turned upside down tax haven banks?

No! Instead, he was tried and found guilty of abetting tax evasion and sentenced to 40 months in jail.

That is suffering for speaking truth to power.

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The new president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III (pictured), has granted security guarantees to a group of whistleblowers under the Witness Protection Program. Now those whistleblowers are disclosing more information about corruption under the prior administration. GMA News TV is reporting that the whistleblowers will disclose information about election rigging involving the prior president and certain military leaders. "We are more than willing (to expose more anomalies) because before, we were being suppressed. Now, we are free to talk," former Army technical sergeant Vidal Doble told GMA. Doble previously released a wiretapped conversation in June 2005 called "Hello, Garci." The recording portrays former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo discussing rigging election results with former Elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. Doble plans to name more names. Doble also reports that military officials told him to implicate only Samuel Ong, a former National Bureau of Investigation official who exposed the election scandal. He produced tape recordings implicating Macapagal-Arroyo in cheating to win her 2004 reelection. Ong died of lung cancer in May 2009. Corrupt military officials apparently wanted the deceased whistleblower to take the fall for the scandal. Jose Barredo Jr., another member of the whistleblower’s group, told GMA that he plans to disclose how funds for a seedling and fertilizer fund were diverted to Macapagal-Arroyo's campaign. Jueteng whistleblower Sandra Cam told GMA that her group applied for the Witness Protection Program because it trusts in the leadership of its present head, Secretary Leila de Lima. I reported here last March about the murder of jueteng whistleblower Wilfredo "Boy" Mayor. Jueteng is an illegal numbers game, and Mayor's testimony helped convict a political ally of Macapagal-Arroyo. These developments demonstrate the power of having whistleblower protections strong enough to convince whistleblowers that they will be safe in making their disclosures. The closer the issues are to national security, the stronger the protections need to be.

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Whistleblower Wilfredo "Boy" Mayor was murdered last Sunday morning in Pasay City, Philippines. According to numerous news reports, gunmen on two motorcycles attacked Mayor's vehicle (which had heavily tinted windows) while it was stopped at a red light at 4:11 am on Sunday.

Mayor had been an operator of an illegal numbers game called "jueteng." His testimony to the Philippine Senate linked President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's son to the illegal game. Former Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz announced that he believes Mayor was killed because he was about to expose a concern that construction projects in Albay were being steered to a favored contractor.  This contractor was exercising monopoly power over construction, preventing effective competition. The projects were funded using the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF). My heart goes out to Mayor's family and friends as I consider how speaking truth to power exposes one to unknown levels of retaliation. Follow these links to stories by ABS-CBN, World News and GMA TV.

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[UK] Develin, Kate, “NHS whistleblower ‘sacked for revealing dumped x-ray scans’,” Telegraph.co.uk, November 14, 2009.

Dr Otto Chan, a consultant radiologist, believes that he was labelled a troublemaker after the revelations about the Royal London. He claims that hospital bosses decided to get rid of him and that his dismissal has left him unable to get another job in the health service. He is suing the hospital for loss of earnings, future earnings and pension.Click here to read more.

[Philippines] "Why charge the whistleblowers?," The Manila Times.net, November 13, 2009. 

We agree with the senators and others who have criticized the Senate joint three-committees’ report on the ZTE scandal for including the two main whistleblowers among the persons recommended for prosecution. Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Senators Panfilo Lacson, Alan Peter Cayetano, and Francis Escudero were right to warn that prosecuting Messrs. Click here to read more.     

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The Philippine Navy has ordered whistleblower Lieutenant Nancy Gadian to appear before the military within 48 hours.  Lt. Gadian courageously blew the whistle on misuse of funds from the joint US-Phillipine Balikatan military exercises spurring a Philippine Navy probe into the alleged misuse of the funding.  However, instead of praising Lt. Gadian for her actions, the military has turned her into a target.
 

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