Press Release
September 21, 2007

DOTC EXEC'S EXPLANATION ON LOSS AND RECONSTITUTION OF BROADBAND CONTRACT RAISES MORE QUESTIONS -- PIMENTEL

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Nene" Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said he found it strange that telecommunications authorities did not immediately reconstitute the National Broadband Network (NBN) contract between the government and China's ZTE Corporation after the document was "stolen" shortly after it was signed in Boao, Hainan, China on April 21, 2007.

Pimentel cited the statement of Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza that both the government and ZTE had "control" copies of the original supply agreement stored in the computers which could be immediately downloaded and reproduced.

And yet, he said it took them more than a month, or on May 24 to reconstitute the "missing" government-ZTE contract, claiming they had to wait for the completion of the report of the National Bureau of Investigation about the loss of the document.

"The basis of the reconstitution was the control copy of the ZTE and the government. That was in the computer, and it's just a matter of reproducing it," Mendoza told a joint hearing on the broadband controversy conducted Thursday by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, Committee on Trade and Commerce and Committee on National Defense.

Pimentel said he was also surprised by Mendoza's revelation that not only the broadband contract, but four other agreements between the government and China were stolen while in the possession of commercial attach� Emmanuel Ang in a hotel.

And even more startling, the minority leader said, was the revelation that although there were two original copies of the broadband contract - one for the government and the other for the ZTE - Mendoza reported that both copies were stolen from Ang.

"There was one copy for us and one copy for the ZTE," Mendoza said. "But the copy for the ZTE was also lost."

On the basis of its investigation, the NBI filed a complaint against Ang with the Ombudsman, according to Secretary Mendoza.

Pimentel also noted that when Asst. Secretary Lorenzo Formoso of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) publicly disclosed the loss of the broadband contract for the first time at a forum at the Ateneo University on June 20, the contract had already been reconstituted.

"In other words, you had already reconstituted the contract and here comes your assistant secretary telling his audience the contract was lost. In other words, here is something very mysterious about the goings-on here," he remarked.

"On June 20, that was the first time somebody officially connected with the government reported that the contract was lost or stolen. To my mind, that raises more questions than your answers so far."

Pimentel said he found unsatisfactory the explanation of Mendoza on why they did not reconstitute the contract until after the submission of the NBI report.

"We wanted to find out what happened to the contract first before trying to reconstitute it. Who knows what might have happened to it? We needed at least an official report as to where and what happened to the document," Mendoza said.

Pimentel also reproached the DOTC officials why they have refused to divulge the contents of the contract in full and to furnish a copies of the contract to interested parties, including the Senate.

But Mendoza claimed that the DOTC has furnished copies of the government's contract with ZTE to certain parties for as long as proper request was made considering that it is an accountable document wherein the proprietary rights of the contractor should be respected.

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