Ex-bucor chief Ragos recants claims vs Leila, but DOJ doubts timing

FORMER officer-in-charge of the Bureau of Corrections (Bucor) Rafael Ragos, another witness in the drug cases filed against Senator Leila de Lima, has executed an affidavit recanting his statements implicating the latter in the illegal-drug trade inside the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa when she was justice secretary.

Ragos’s recantation came several days after confessed drug lord Kerwin Espinosa walked back his sworn statements claiming De Lima benefited from illegal drug operations in the NBP.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) found the timing of Ragos’s recantation suspicious, and said it will have little bearing on the pending drugrelated cases against the senator.

Ragos, who served as deputy director for intelligence of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), claimed he was forced to execute false affidavits and issue false testimonies before the House of Representatives and the court against De Lima and her bodyguard

Ronnie Dayan by several personalities, led by former Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II.

He said his claims in his affidavits and House and court testimonies “are all fiction, false and fabricated.”

Ragos said in his four-page affidavit, “I was forced to execute the above affidavits and deliver the above House and court testimonies against Sec. De Lima and Ronnie Dayan due to threats of being detained myself for the crime of engaging in the illegal drug trade that I did not commit.”

The DOJ, however, noted the timing of Ragos’s recantation: five years after he revealed before the Senate about the illegal drug trade inside NBP and how De Lima allegedly benefitted from this illegal activity.

November 2012 affidavit

ON September 5, 2016, Ragos executed an affidavit claiming that in November 2012, as Bucor OIC, he and his aide Jovencio Ablen delivered a black bag containing P5 million to Dayan and De Lima at the latter’s residence.