ACCOMPANIED by his lawyer, veteran journalist Leo Lastimosa faced yesterday investigators of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) 7, which summoned him to produce the audio recording of his interview with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV last year.
The subpoena came after former Davao City vice mayor Paolo Duterte requested the police unit to get a record of the interview on Sept. 8, 2017.
This is in connection with Duterte’s plan to file a libel complaint against the legislator, who implicated him in the P6.4-billion shabu shipment that was smuggled through the Manila port in May last year.
“I don’t know why CIDG involved itself in the civil and criminal cases filed by Paolo Duterte against Trillanes. My suspicion is that Paolo’s camp is exploiting CIDG’s new subpoena powers to strengthen their cases,” Lastimosa told SunStar Cebu in an interview via Facebook Messenger.
The subpoena dated July 18, 2018 was issued by CIDG Director Roel Obusan.
President Rodrigo Duterte, Paolo’s father, had signed last March Republic Act 10973, which gives the police and CIDG the power to issue subpoenas.
The tri-media personality submitted at 12 p.m. yesterday his affidavit, which stated that the audio recording had been deleted from the archives of radio dyAB, where he has a current affairs program.
Lastimosa discussed the subpoena from the CIDG in his radio program, Arangkada, yesterday morning. He said the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) had issued a directive instructing radio stations to keep the recordings of programs for 10 days.
When there is a complaint against a certain program, the radio station must keep the record for 30 days. Lastimosa said that if there is a court order, the recording can be kept for a longer period.
“Kini, 10 days human sa amo interview... wala may reklamo from NTC, or court. Way mitawag sa amo attention nga tipigi na. Mao among gidelete in compliance with NTC. Nireklamno sila 10 months later, hagbay rang na-delete ang maong recording,” he said in his program yesterday.
ABS-CBN Cebu engineering head Peter Martin Alfafara executed an affidavit stating that the recordings in the archive have been deleted. KAL