Gordon vows to open Senate probe on Mojica murder

Independent Senator Richard J. Gordon today said he will initiate a Senate investigation not only on the murder of former agriculture resident Ombudsman Marlene Esperat but also of a former agriculture employee Teofilo Mojica.

Gordon, chairman of the Senate blue ribbon committee, made the avowal as he suspected that the murders of Esperat and Mojica may have been tied to the P732-million fertilizer fund scam purportedly engineered by former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante.

"We shudder at the revelations that millions of tax payers' money is carted away. And not only was the money stolen from government coffers, but it may also have been used in the killing of Esperat and Mojica to silence them," he said.

"The Senate will not be intimidated; we will continue digging out what has been kept hidden and encourage more people to surface. But right now, I fear for the lives of our whistleblowers and witnesses," he added.

Gordon earlier chided the Ombudsman and the DA for not seeking a more in-depth investigation on the slaying of Esperat and Mojica.

"I don't know why the Ombudsman did not take action when one of their own was killed. And so with the DA because prior to Mojica's killing, he had documents on a P168-million anomaly in DA Region XII," he said.

Gordon said there are indications of a very powerful and well-financed organization illegally carting away millions of pesos of people's money, which kills people whom it suspects to spill the beans about its transactions.

"The murders of Esperat and Mojica were meant to keep them and others from coming out with the truth. That makes these two murders a very big problem of the government. It is time to conduct a full-blown investigation," he stressed.

In 2003, Esperat filed a graft complaint against Bolante, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, former Agriculture Secretary Luis 'Cito' Lorenzo Jr., and other officials of the DA.

Two years after, on March 24, 2005, Esperat was gunned down at her home in Tacurong, Sultan Kudarat, in front of her children.

Meanwhile, three years after Esperat's murder, Mojica and his family were killed with a 45 caliber pistol inside their house in San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan on September 12, 2008.

Mojica was a member of the board of directors of its employees association. He allegedly had documents which would link two DA finance officers in Region XII to a P168-million anomaly in the said DA regional office.