Veteran politician used BC gangster as informant

The Philippine appeals court has dismissed murder charges against a fugitive senator, with troubling links to Canada, who was accused of masterminding the killing of two people more than a decade ago.
The Court of Appeals also nullified the arrest warrant issued by a lower court against Senator Panfilo Lacson for the killings of publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000.
Lacson went into hiding in January last year, two days before the Department of Justice filed double murder charges against him.
The 80-page Court of Appeals decision noted that the main witness in the case, former police officer Cezar Mancao, was ‘a not credible and trustworthy witness.’
The court noted that Mancao has ‘the propensity to contradict himself on material points even under oath.’
‘Inconsistencies and material contradiction affect the credibility of Cezar Mancao and the veracity of his statements,’ it said.
Mancao, after the verdict, dared Lacson to face him in court.
“I am not afraid of him (Lacson). I am ready for whatever counteraction his camp would take against me for testifying against him,” Mancao said.
Mancao insisted he is telling the truth that Lacson masterminded the murders of publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000.
“There is nothing to be afraid of because I am on the side of truth. I am telling the truth in my testimony against him,” Mancao said.
Mancao admitted he felt betrayed by the decision of the Court of Appeals dismissing the charges against Lacson.
Lacson was the country’s police chief at the time of the killings. He was accused of ordering the hit with the approval of then-president Joseph Estrada.
Estrada, who has denied any involvement in the killings, was not charged because of lack of evidence.
Before his death, Dacer was allegedly helping opposition groups to gather information about the corrupt activities of Estrada, who was eventually ousted by a military-backed mass uprising in 2001 over allegations of corruption.
In 2007, the Sandiganbayan, an anti-graft court, convicted Estrada of corruption and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He never served the sentence because he was immediately pardoned by former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Lacson, a veteran politician, has some troubling connections with Canada;
• Lacson, when he was police chief, used Vancouver Triad gangster Steven Lik Man Wong as a confidential informant. The gangster had faked his own death to avoid arrest and had fled to the Philippines. Another police undercover agent Mary Ong aka Rosebud claimed that Lacson had terminated an operation to nab Wong after she linked the Canadian gangster to a powerful clan from Lacson’s home province of Cavite.
• Mary Ong, who is in protective custody at a Filipino army base, also claims that several high profile police officers in Lacson’s private anti-drug task force have settled in Canada after allegations that they had killed traffickers by throwing them off helicopters and stealing their loot.
• In 2003, Lacson, faced accusations that he, and his wife, had secret deposits in a Canadian financial institution and 16 other bank accounts in Hong Kong and the United States, totaling over US$700 million. The money, police said in a report to Philippine president Gloria Arroyo is believed to have been amassed by Lacson and his cronies since 1996 from drug smuggling, money laundering operations and the kidnapping for ransom of Chinese businessmen in Manila.
• Former police Senior Superintendent Michael Ray Aquino who worked in Lacson’s inner circle fled the Philippines for Canada on July 27, 2001 after he was implicated in the murder of publicist, Salvador Dacer, the summary execution of members of an illegal betting syndicate and after his police team was investigated for using navy divers to pick up heroin dropped from Chinese shipping vessels in Manila Bay. He is believed to have used fake passports to sneak out of the Philippines via Mactan International Airport in Cebu on a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong en route to Las Vegas and later Canada.
Later that same year Aquino and others were stopped by Canadian Customs in Halifax for not declaring some US$30,000 they were carrying.  Aquino had also tried to smuggle one million dollars from Canada into America via the Buffalo border crossing. The money confiscated at the border crossings had been linked to Lacson. One of Lacson and Aquino’s contacts in Canada was then identified as businessman Jerome Tang. Tang’s daughter is reportedly Lacson’s godchild.
• Lacson’s office cleared controversial Macau casino king Stanley Ho of links to organized crime after a secret Canadian report on the latter’s underworld connections was made public in Manila in 2000. Ho, who has extensive interests in Canada was planning to open a floating restaurant in Manila Bay. The confidential report detailed in part the business operations of Ho and his possible links to triads. Lacson who was the head of the Philippine National Police then said he had “nothing incriminating” on Ho, who took out ads in the Philippines to decry the claims made in the Canadian report.