"Who’s Mary Ann Maslog?"
President Marcos said this as he denied allegations that Malacañang allegedly tapped Maslog to link former president Rodrigo Duterte into Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGO)-related crimes.
"No, I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know who this person is," Marcos said when he was sought for reaction on Senator Ronald Dela Rosa's claim that the Marcos administration was funding a person to tag Duterte, Dela Rosa, and others in POGO cases.
Maslog, the suspect in the 1998 textbook scam who was presumed dead, reportedly flew to Indonesia to help negotiate the surrender of dismissed Bamban, Tarlac mayor Alice Guo.
During the ongoing Senate investigation into illegal POGOs, Maslog claimed that she was “tapped” by the Philippine National Police Intelligence Group (PNP-IG) to convince Guo to surrender.
Maslog was recently detained at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) after an investigation revealed that Maslog and Francisco were the same person.
Marcos also made a comment on the recent developments on the POGO inquiries, where Guo was being implicated by a Chinese spy named She Zhijiang who’s currently detained in Thailand.
The President said it is just the "natural evolution of the hearings.
"Well, you know, as this process has been going on, more and more people are coming out of the woodwork to help us in our investigations. And this is just I think another one of those," Marcos said in an interview before leaving Laos on Oct. 11.
"It’s just the natural process. And we’re… Of course, this helps the effort if people are willing to testify or are willing to provide information that will lead us to the truth. And that is what we are after," he added.