QC Police stops probe on bugging device found at Cory’s phone line

By Ronron
June 1, 2007

Citing lack of complaint from the concerned and cooperation of the telephone company, police has stopped investigating the bugging device that was found connected to the phone line of former President Corazon Aquino in Quezon City.

Asked for an update on the Quezon City Police District’s (QCPD) probe on the incident, QCPD Director Sr. Supt. Magtanggol Gatdula said Friday: “It’s over. There’s nothing to it anymore.”

Gatdula said the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Company has stopped sending for police investigation their personnel who have access to the cabinet box where the bugging device was found last May 2.

“We no longer have contact with the Supervisor (of the phone mechanics),” Gatdula said in Filipino.

Police had said that more than 30 repairmen hold a key to the cabinet box that is located along Times Street in Quezon City, several meters away from the former President’s house.

Gatdula said they could not force the PLDT management to send their personnel for police investigation because “we have no subpoena power, unlike the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation).”

Gatdula could not immediately say how many PLDT mechanic personnel were subjected to investigation.

Asked if the case then is deemed dismissed or shelved, Gatdula said: “In the first place, the alleged victim has not even filed a (formal) complaint.”

He explained that if police caught the suspect/s in the act of placing the improvised, “crude” bugging device, then it could pursue the investigation even without a private complainant.

“The problem is what we have are second-hand information,” said Gatdula.

The bugging device, which was made of a small cassette tape recorder and a black box that served as its power supply, was discovered by a PLDT repairman in the afternoon of May 2. It was then relayed to the former President.

The incident was only reported to police on the following day, or on May 3.

Police said the device was indeed working since it was able to record some phone conversations of Aquino and some members of her family./DMS