P48 million enough to quell 9/11-like attack: police

From the Mindanao Gold Star Daily (Dec 27): P48 million enough to quell 9/11-like attack: police

WHAT can you buy with P48 million? Or better still, what kind of intelligence operation can law enforcers mount with that kind of money?

Intelligence agents from the police agreed a P48-million budget would have been enough to counter an offensive similar to the infamous terrorist attacks in the US that shocked the world on Sept. 11, 2001.  The series of four coordinated terrorist attacks were blamed on the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

The question surfaced following city accountant Beda Joy Elot’s revealing letter to ex-mayor Vicente Emano early this month. In the letter, Elot asked Emano to liquidate P48 million in intelligence, anti-insurgency and emergency funds that the former official sourced from city hall’s coffers in January. The fund, according to Elot, was “granted” on Jan. 13, 2013.

Emano has not denied withdrawing the funds. He just said he is not required by government audit rules to liquidate intelligence funds, a contention rejected by Elot who cited a Commission on Audit (COA) guideline to argue that intelligence funds are not “free money.”

“That kind of fund would be enough to spend for counter intelligence operations to prevent something like 9/11,” a source from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) who requested anonymity told The Gold Star Daily.

Chief Insp. Lemuel Gonda, chief for operatons and planning of the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (Cocpo), said he has yet to hear of a single intelligence operation in the city that cost P48 million.

Neither has there been a security threat in the city or the country that would require P48 million for a single counter-intelligence operation, Gonda said.

Such amount, he said, could even surpass the city police’s budget for an entire year. For 2014, Mayor Oscar Moreno only proposed some P18 million for the city police.

“It really depends on the kind of threat the city is facing. But for threats of bomb attacks, intelligence operatives won’t require that kind of budget for a single operation,” said Gonda.

He said not even more progressive cities in Metro Manila spend that kind of money for intelligence operations to counter a terrorist threat.

“For government to spend that kind money to counter a local threat is too much. That’s too costly… unless if the threat comes from an international terrorist organization,” said Gonda.

He and other sources said international terrorist groups are known to spend millions of dollars to buy or trade intelligence information. The “buying price,” they said, range from US$1 million to  US$5 million.

That means, they said, government agents would need to spend millions of dollars, too, for counter intelligence operations.

But Gonda said Cagayan de Oro has never been a target of an international terrorist group.

City police director Graciano Mijares earlier said Cagayan de Oro faced no serious peace and order threat in January to require the use of P48 million in discretionary funds from city hall’s intelligence, anti-insurgency and emergency budgets.

A source from the CIDG said it has been estimated that the al-Qaeda spent less than P21 million for the 9/11 attacks that toppled the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

“Terrorist attacks are like businesses––terrorists spend huge amounts of money and they expect the ‘return of investment’ to double or triple,” the source from the CIDG said.

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