MANILA – The Philippines’ premier law enforcement agency together with international security experts have uncovered a plot to influence President Benigno Aquino III, his top officials and government agencies against a Canadian company with major investments in the country.
The National Bureau of Investigation’s (NBI) report declaring as “maliciously created” a set of emails that were used as in reports submitted to the Office of the President, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje and other Cabinet Secretaries, heads of government agencies including the National Security Commission (NSC), private institutions, military and police officers and the media, against TVIRD, the Philippine affiliate of Canadian mining firm TVIRD.
“The emails…did not come from the authentic source (TVI) and are maliciously created,” NBI Agent Francis V. Senora concluded in his July 13, 2012 Memorandum.
The fake emails were circulated earlier this year supposedly implicating TVIRD executives and other individuals in a murder and other criminal conspiracies against illegal miners in Balabag, Bayog, Zamboanga del Sur.
TVIRD’s legal counsel Fulgencio Factoran, Jr. decried the allegations contained in the fake emails, saying that their creation and circulation was a “clear dirty tricks operation using fake emails to criminally misrepresent TVIRD and mislead no less than President Benigno S. Aquino III and other top government officials, spurring an investigation into the veracity of the email contents by the NSC.”
“TVIRD strongly denies involvement in this and any criminal acts,” Factoran added. “We are a legitimate, multi-million dollar publicly listed business. Our business practices here and in various parts of the world are beyond reproach.”
At the same forum, Pacific Strategies and Assessments (PSA), an international private risk assessment and security agency, also branded the emails as “spurious documents” after doing a thorough analysis and investigation.
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