RP church charities get casino funds
RP church charities get casino funds
MANILA (AFP): Catholic charities in the Philippines received a vast amount of money from government-run casinos and other gambling operations despite the church's opposition to gambling, official records revealed here Saturday.
From 1986 until the present, Catholic church charities received 181.87 million pesos (US$4 million) from gambling operations, according to documents submitted by Alice Reyes, head of the state-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR).
They were submitted as part of a Senate investigation into allegations President Joseph Estrada received huge payoffs from illegal gambling syndicates.
The head of the committee conducting the investigation, Senator Aquilino Pimentel read out the figure of 181.87 million pesos donated to state-run charities from July, 1986, when PAGCOR was revamped, to September this year.
Reyes confirmed the figure although she did not have a breakdown or say which charities received the money. Pimentel instructed her to submit these details this week.
The church has long been at the forefront of criticizing the Estrada administration for promoting gambling through state-run casinos, lotteries and on-line games.
After the scandal over the illegal gambling bribes broke out two weeks ago, senior church leaders were among the first to call on Estrada to resign.
Estrada has denied the charges and refused to resign.
However last week, in an effort to quell the controversy, he announced the government would privatize state-run casinos, and ordered a halt to on-line gaming and betting on the popular Basque sport of jai-alai.
On Saturday, Estrada appealed to the public to look beyond allegations he received bribes from illegal gambling syndicates even as two of his sons appeared at a Senate inquiry into the scandal.
"Since I took office, we have been attacked every day. My administration has gone through this type of testing many times," Estrada said in a statement aired on his weekly radio show.
"We will answer this with hard work," he remarked, saying he would not be distracted by accusations from a former friend, provincial governor Luis Singson, that he received millions of dollars in pay-offs from operators of jueteng, an illegal numbers game.
Senior Estrada aides also defended him on the radio show and reiterated the government would work harder to show it is not being distracted by the raging controversy.
"That is the order of President Estrada. It must be a government that does more than just business as usual. We must really improve our services to the public," Estrada's chief aide, Executive Secretary Ronaldo Zamora said.
"What is important is we solve the problems of our economy," he said. Both the stock market and the peso currency have plunged during the crisis.
Zamora claimed the scandal was "a sideshow" that was distracting the government.