DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 7 Sept) – Resigned vice mayor Paolo Z. Duterte and brother-in-law Atty. Manases Carpio filed separate libel charges on Thursday against opposition Senator Antonio F. Trillanes IV for accusing them of corruption and extortion.
In their complaint affidavits dated September 6, 2018, Duterte and Carpio said the opposition lawmaker made malicious remarks when he accused them of conspiring with Land Transportation Regulatory Board (LTFRB) Central Visayas director Ahmed Cuison in extorting Uber and other similar companies during a radio interview with Leo Lastimosa of DYAB Cebu on September 8, 2017.
The two said the senator also hurled malicious and derogatory accusations when he accused them of corruption and extortion involving the Philippine Road Board and Department of Public Works and Highways as part of their supposed corrupt tentacles and “shakedown.”
The two dismissed these accusations as downright false, baseless and unfounded.
The former vice mayor said Trillanes’s remarks were intended to “malign, destroy and kill my good name and reputation locally, nationally, and internationally.”
“It is based on double, if not multiple, hearsay information which he claimed to have received from someone, the identity of whom however he did not even bother to divulge. It is pure black propaganda,” Duterte said.
The younger Duterte announced his resignation on December 25, 2017 after the senator dragged his name into the P6.4-billion shabu smuggling from China that arrived in the country via Manila International Container Port in Tondo, Manila on May 16, 2017. He also cited as reason the squabble with his daughter, Isabelle, on social media.
The presidential son and his brother-in-law filed on December 5, 2017 a civil case against Trillanes based on similar accusations. They asked Trillanes to pay P6.6 million in damages – P3 million moral damages, P3 million exemplary damages, P500,000 attorney’s fees and expenses of litigation and P100,000 nominal damages. (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
