CONTROVERSIAL businesswoman Rose Nono Lin, subject of an arrest warrant by the Senate Blue Ribbon for skipping hearings on the multibillion contracts of Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. (PPC) and the budget department, will seek “judicial recourse” against such warrant, her lawyer said.
The Blue Ribbon Committee, in a draft report, earlier recommended the filing of graft and plunder charges against Lin and her husband Lin Weixiong, who she said had lavished her with expensive gifts like the Lexus that, she famously told senators, she just found in her garage one morning.
“Ms. Rose will exercise her legal rights to protect herself against the improvident issuance of the warrants of arrest,” Lin’s counsel Alma Mallonga of the Law Offices Siguion Reyna, Montecillo & Ongsiako said on Friday even as they appealed to the Senate committee to recall the warrant of arrest against her client.
Lin was a stockholder of the already non-operational Pharmally Biological Pharmaceutical Company (PBPC), which the Senate Committee claimed was a sister company of PPC.
The Senate questioned the P8 billion worth of contracts bagged by the PPC, which had only P625,000 in paid-up capital. It claimed that the contracts were disadvantageous to the government.
In one of the 18 Blue Ribbon hearings on the questioned pandemic supply contracts, it was found out that a certain Huang Tzu Yen of the Taiwan-based Pharmally International Holding Co. Ltd., is a director in both the PBPC and the PPC.
Also presented in the Senate was a document showing that Lin’s husband is the financial manager of PPC and a close associate of former presidential adviser Micheal Yang, who provided the financing to PPC.
However, Mallonga said the documents did not prove that PBPC and PPC were sister companies, or that Lin was an official or shareholder of the latter or has a contract with the government.
While it was acknowledged that Lin’s husband and Yang were partners in some activities, Mallonga pointed out it did not prove anything.
“Ms. Rose is a wife of Lin Weixiong but she is not her husband, she stands on her own, she has her own business,” said Mallonga, adding that “interlinking activities or interest do not prove that they are involved in Pharmally.”
Allegations against Lin were unfounded and at some point irrelevant, such as the issue on her properties, which have nothing to do whatsoever with the Pharmally investigation, the lawyer added. “All these are speculations. She is not an officer [of Pharmally] nor involved in the operation or implementation of the contract,” Mallonga pointed out.
Lin’s properties became an issue after she told senators—replying to Senator Richard J. Gordon, Blue Ribbon chairman who was asking her about her Lexus—that she just woke up one day and found the Lexus in her garage. She presumed it was another gift from her husband, whom she described as someone who lavished her with expensive things. His whereabouts remain unknown.
In her last participation in the Senate hearing, Lin denied links with the PPC, that she has no contract with the government whatsoever and not an official or a shareholder of the controversial pharmaceutical company.
Mallonga has asked Gordon to reconsider the warrant of arrest issued against her client for not attending the January 27 hearing.
She claimed that there is no reason to cite Lin for perjury because she has fully cooperated with the investigation and has a valid reason for not attending the January 27, 2022 and December 21, 2021 hearings.
“The record shows that for the scheduled hearing of 27 January 2022…as counsel for Ms. Lin, wrote the Committee a letter stating the medical reasons why she could not attend the same,” Mallonga said in her appeal, adding that they also submitted an RT-PCR test showing that Lin tested positive for Covid-19, which was “confirmed by Dr. Leachon during the hearing, might possibly be of the Omicron variant.”
Mallonga further said that the same is also true in Lin’s absence at the December 21, 2021 hearing because she was in Guimaras province for a valid reason and internet services were unavailable that time, making her participation in the Senate hearing impossible.
“We assure the Committee that, as shown by the foregoing, Ms. Lin has fully cooperated with her multiple appearances in various hearings to answer questions from the members of the Committee. She will assuredly continue to do so,” the letter added.