Self-confessed hitmen Edgar Matobato and Arthur Lascañas, the prized witnesses of the opposition on the alleged Davao Death Squad, are living off Senator Antonio Trillanes’ supposed stash of wealth in his alleged bank accounts, President Rodrigo Duterte claimed Friday.
In an interview with state broadcaster PTV4 aired Friday night, Duterte questioned why the two “until now are out abroad.”
Matobato and Lascanas, self-confessed serial killers, pinned the blame on Duterte as the one responsible for the thousands of deaths by the DDS when he was still Davao mayor.
Both Matobato and Lascañas said they saw signatures of the Davao slayings in the extrajudicial killings in Duterte’s war on drugs, but the President’s allies in the Senate said they found no evidence of extrajudicial or summary execution done by police and unknown assailants in his anti-narcotics crackdown.
Lascanas has fled to Singapore since April, while Matobato remains at large.
Duterte said that the money used to fund anti-government rallies “could be” from Trillanes’ stash of ill-gotten wealth.
Duterte claimed that Trillanes’ stash of money from his offshore accounts may be used to destabilize the government.
“Based on analysis, the funds being laundered by Trillanes and his group may not be for their personal use, but rather is being caused for their cause and possibly to destabilize government by paying for witnesses and funding for destabilization operations,” the President said.
He added that the senator’s associates, who were extorting money from some senators and large corporations, were the ones bankrolling efforts to topple him.
