Bantag surfaces, alleges drug lord behind Percy Lapid slay
After days of radio silence, suspended Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director General Gerald Bantag surfaced Friday, and said that a convicted drug lord could be the mastermind behind the killing of broadcaster Percival “Percy Lapid” Mabasa.
Bantag showed up on SMNI, the network owned by controversial preacher Apollo Quiboloy, after murder complaints were filed against him and others over the death of the hard-hitting radioman whose real name is Percival Mabasa).
According to Bantag, self-confessed gunman Joel Escorial and Cristito Villamor Palana, the supposed middleman in the killing of the broadcaster, have direct connections with German Agojo, a convicted drug dealer who has been serving a life sentence since 2002.
He was also tagged in the 2004 killing of Batangas Regional Trial Court Judge Voltaire Rosales, who convicted him of selling shabu in 1999.
“Attention Lapid family, yung pumatay po kay Percy Lapid ay tauhan nitong Agojo na pinakuha ni [Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin] Boying Remulla sa NBI. Ano papel niya sa buhay? Tauhan niya yung pumatay na si Escorial at yung kaibigan niya na si Villamor (Attention Lapid family, the one who killed Percy Lapid was a henchman of Agojo who who was taken by the NBI upon the orders of [Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin] Boying Remulla. What was [Agojo’s] role? His crew is the killer of Escorial and his friend Villamor),” Bantag said in the interview with SMNI.
“Narco-politics. That has been the case even then,” added Bantag, who accused Remulla of leading the move to discredit him.
Bantag also angrily dared Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla to resign as he supposedly lacked credibility owing to his son’s arrest on drug possession charges.
He also maintained that Mabasa was not the one who recorded footage of his Laguna home that was subsequently utilized in Percy’s “Lapid Fire” radio program’s “Cinderella Man” episode. He claimed that Remulla is linked to the vehicles carrying the individuals who took photos of his home.
“You can actually see the set up. They want me removed from BuCor. They wanted to replace me as early as August 2022. I was already giving (Remulla) my resignation, but he turned it down. I did not understand then, now I understand why,” Bantag said.
“You are trying to condition the minds of the people that I was the one behind the killing of Lapid,” he added.
Following the airing of Bantag’s explosive interview, the Department of Justice said allegations against him in connection with the killings of Lapid and Villamor should be answered in the right forum.
“There is a proper forum and a proper time to thresh this all out,” the DOJ said in a statement, referring to the process of answering the complaints against Bantag through a counter-affidavit. “This is a sworn statement answering all the allegations in the complaint. He will be given that chance.”
