Lawyer denies cover-up of Benhur files

MANILA - The lawyer of pork scam whistle-blower Benhur Luy believes there was nothing irregular about the deletion of some files in Luy's hard drive. Lawyer Raji Mendoza said the deletion does not mean there was a cover-up. "Alam niyo naman yung files sa computer, when you input data, sometimes you modify it or amend it or change it or thoroughly delete it and create new files. ganun lang yung nangyari diyan. Basta the NBI was able to retrieve whatever data that was deleted," he said in an ANC interview. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) earlier discovered that a number of files in Benhur Luy's hard drive were deleted following a forensic examination. NBI cybercrime division chief Ronald Aguto told reporters that the NBI was able to retrieve the deleted files consisting of Word and Excel documents. Aguto said he would not know who deleted the files but that they were deleted around last December to January. He said the NBI did not go into the contents of the deleted files. "Noong pagdating sa amin ng hard drive, inexamine natin. During the examination, the software was able to detect that some were deleted files and we were able to recover it," Aguto said. The NBI, led by its director Virgilio Mendez, turned over a CD containing a copy of Luy's files. The NBI's forensic report is also included in the CD. Senate blue ribbon committee chair TG Guingona said he is making the contents of the CD public after copies are distributed to the senators. "In the spirit of transparency, again, so that the interest of the public will be served, we are going to divulge the contents of this, first to our fellow senators, then to the public," Guingona told reporters. The original hard drive is with the NBI while printed and hard copies of the disk's contents, running about 31,700 pages, have been submitted to the Ombudsman.