NBN-ZTE Deal
After reading the Statement of Joey de Venecia, the Statement of Abalos and the ZTE Supply Contract all submitted to the Senate, I have come to the conclusion that Joey de Venecia has been telling a lie with his statement obviously sanitized to suit an opinion that Malacañang has been cooking an anomalous transaction with regard to NBN Project. In fairness to the government, I couldn’t find a trail that would lead to a dubious transaction except those enumerated by Joey de Venecia involving himself and Abalos. But Abalos seem to be nearer to the truth because while Joey continuously denied being in association with Abalos, he also narrated the many times he attended meeting with Abalos at the latter’s office in Comelec and Wack Wack. Abalos seems to be correct in saying that it was Joey who was pursuing him because the venues of the meetings were all in his place. If indeed Joey did not agree with Abalos’ offer (assuming he really had) why would Joey attend many meetings with Abalos including going with him to China?.
This is my own side of story. The ZTE Supply Contract was already a done deal even before PGMA’s SONA last July 2006 because the MOU was signed around that time. What happened between July 2006 to April 21, 2007 (the official signing of the Supply Contract with ZTE in China) were all groundworking and refinements of the Contract including the approval of the NBN Project by NEDA. The Contract was between the Governments of China and the Philippines and ZTE was assigned by the Chinese Government to supply the materials needed by the NBN Project, ZTE being China government’s owned and controlled Corporation. It was a case of Top to Bottom Planning where the evaluation of the proposals were suited to the ZTE deal already. In fairness, there are no indications of anomalous transaction among the President’s trusted men except the Php200M offered by Abalos to Neri which was maybe because Neri was for BOT and not for a loan as was proposed by the Government of China.
During these times however, Joey tried to steal the deal by submitting his own concept which was a BOT Scheme. This was based on the pronouncements by PGMA during the November Meeting of ICC that she wanted NBN to be a BOT, private sector led, no government subsidy and should reduce gov’t telecom expenses. To accommodate the President, DOTC accepted the proposal submitted by AHI thru Joey. It was during this time when the trouble begun. As alleged by Joey, Abalos proposed to partner with Joey and AHI with Abalos covering the 4th, 5th and 6th class municipalities. But later in the meeting Joey discovered that Abalos was backing ZTE and allegedly told Joey to drop his proposal in favor of the ZTE. When Joey declined, he offered a partnership between AHI and ZTE. (There is inconsistency here because “How could Abalos propose an alliance with AHI but at the same time back ZTE? This statement of Joey gave him away and I am inclined to believe that it was really Joey who approached Abalos and offered an alliance between ZTE and AHI in exchange of the US$10M. Joey continuously asserts in his statements that he did not agree with this proposed partnership but all his succeeding revelations of meeting with Abalos and ZTE lead to a conclusion that he brokered the alliance but their talks broke down somewhere along the way. According to the DOTC evaluation report, Joey’s proposal required that the Philippine government should have its own VoIP. The ZTE on the other hand will provide the package including technical assistance that’s why the project should go to ZTE.
To me, it was Joey DV who messed up the whole project.
