LIM
CEBU businessman Peter Lim made good on his promise to appear before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to clear his name.
He showed up at the NBI central office in Manila yesterday afternoon, six days after he met with President Rodrigo Duterte and expressed his intent to be investigated following reports that he’s among the country’s big-time drug lords.
“My family’s life is in danger because of all these wrongful allegations,” he said in an interview inside the NBI elevator.
The 69-year-old Lim was the Cebu-based businessman that President Rodrigo Duterte accused of being a drug lord.
He was also the same person that the House of Representatives committee on dangerous drugs investigated in 2006 for the same allegations.
But Lim said there was no truth to that and his appearance, even as he hoped that cooperating with the bureau’s probe would dispel those doubts.
“He has no choice. He has to face the music,” said Lim’s lawyer Ramon Esguerra in a separate interview.
Esguerra added: “The real Peter Lim will never surface.”
Lim, in barong, and his lawyers arrived at the bureau past noon and proceeded to the conference room, where probers led by Director Roel Bolivar, head of NBI’s special task force on drug abuse, met and interviewed him. The meeting lasted for three hours.
There was a stenographer inside and the questioning, which Esguerra described as “probe,” was taped.
Lim also presented his passport “for identification purposes,” Esguerra said.
NBI spokesman Peter Lavin said Lim’s camp submitted an affidavit but Esguerra later clarified this, saying they gave NBI a letter — not an affidavit.
Esguerra said the letter, which they addressed to NBI director Dante Gierran, aimed to prove Lim’s innocence. But he declined to elaborate. “The NBI said it should be confidential,” Esguerra said.
Lavin also said that the bureau has formed a special task force that would focus on Lim’s case.
Esguerra said what happened yesterday was just a preliminary investigation and that his client would return to Cebu.
He said Lim is willing to come back to the NBI if needed.
Lawyer Pedro Leslie Salva, one of Lim’s legal counsel in Cebu, was happy with Lim’s decision to go to the NBI.
“That goes to show that h’s not hiding anything. There’s really nothing to hide and there was nothing to hide,” Salva told Cebu Daily News over the phone.
He wasn’t with Lim when the businessman went to the NBI yesterday.
Salva said it’s unfair for his client to be accused of a serious offense which he never committed.
“A lot of people are using the name Peter Lim. But people are thinking that he’s the one alluded to as a drug lord. That’s not true. I can vouch for his innocence,” said Salva who works as Lim’s legal counsel for two decades now.
Under the constitution, Salva said any person is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
“But this is seemingly not the case here. He (Lim) is trying to prove his innocence. But of course, he has to comply with the investigation to show good faith,” he said.