NBI came out with wrong list
THE Na - t iona l
Bureau of Investigation
(NBI) has come out with the wrong list of immigration officers, who will be charged for allegedly spiriting Chinese nationals through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in exchange for large sums of money.
The scheme — dubbed pastillas because of the wads of bribe money that were reportedly rolled up thinly like the Filipino candy — earned a number of immigration officers and their boss at the Justice department billions of pesos in its heyday.
Most of the 19 immigration officers that the NBI said were supposedly involved in the pastillas scheme were not on the list that I came out with in this column last year.
Noticeably omitted on the list of immigration officials to be charged before the Office of the Ombudsman was the father-son tandem of Maynardo and Marc Red Mariñas.
Maynardo, who was with the Bureau of Immigration special operations communications unit, and Mark Red, who was deputy commissioner and head of the NAIA immigration office, were allegedly running the syndicate that brought in mainland Chinese to work at online gaming or as prostitutes.
Their alleged hatchet man was Fidel Mendoza, whose job at immigration was that of a security guard but who lorded it over the immigration officers at the NAIA.
The anomalous setup — having security guard Mendoza outranking immigration officers at NAIA for example — was made possible when then Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre 2nd arrogated unto himself the power to assign and reassign immigration personnel, rendering Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente inutile.
My source in all this was immigration officer Allison Chiong, who exposed the syndicate because of the disparity in the apportioning of bribe money.
Chiong said frontliners like him received a pittance while his NAIA superiors were accumulating millions of pesos every day.
Chiong, who came to my office in Pasig last year, gave me details on the operations of the syndicate.
At first, I shielded the identity of Chiong under the code name, Deep Throat, for security reasons.
Deep Throat was the pseudonym given to a White House official, who exposed the Watergate scandal to the Washington Post that led to the resignation of then US president Richard Nixon.
But even after a series of articles came out in this column about the syndicate’s operations, nothing was done about it by the powers-that-be.
Chiong — who sarcastically asked me after no investigation was done, “Does the President read your column at all, sir?” — spilled the beans to Sen. Risa Hontiveros, chair of the Senate committee on women, children and family relations, who called for a Senate inquiry.
I was even called to the Senate as a resource person, but then the pandemic came.
I hope to be invited again by the Senate to corroborate what Chiong told me.
As a consequence of what I said at the Senate hearing, Aguirre has filed a slew of libel cases against me and my editors and other officers of The ManilaTimes.
Let me give my readers a refresher about what I wrote in this column last year about the syndicate.
The exposé came out in two parts: the first, detailing how much the syndicate was earning every day — P10 million to P15 million daily — and the second, describing how the syndicate leaders were living the life of the rich and famous.
The syndicate’s lieutenants could afford to travel abroad in style, stay at posh hotels or eat in expensive restaurants.
The accompanying photos show how the syndicate leaders were living it up.
Most of those shown in the third photo, except for Mendoza, were not on the NBI list of those to be charged by the Office of the Ombudsman.
I was dumbfounded when their names were not included in the NBI list.
I was told by reliable sources at the Immigration bureau that there was a strong lobby “from above” to exclude the names of Meynardo and Marc Red Mariñas and that of the ranking government official.
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Marc Red Mariñas resigned his position at the Bureau of Immigration to run for mayor of Muntinlupa City, but he lost.
After the younger Mariñas resigned as NAIA immigration chief, he was replaced by Fidel Mendoza who, at the risk of sounding redundant, has the item designation of immigration security guard.
Mendoza — allegedly the syndicate’s front man, who had contacts in China — was appointed as Mariñas replacement.
I was surprised that the NBI included Liya Wu, owner of Empire Travel Agency, as one of the respondents in the pastillas scheme.
Empire International Travel and Tours is a travel agency, accredited by the Immigration bureau and the Department of Tourism. (In fact, the DoT owes her company P30 million, but that’s another story.)
Empire is one of the eight travel agencies —the others being Asia Landmark, Wilkat, Cloud Travel, Kingstar, Archi, SPRE Boracay and Uni-Orient — that conduct business with immigration through the visaupon-arrival (VUA) system.
Under VUA, incoming Chinese tourists are granted visas upon their arrival at the airport.
VUA is legal as it was approved through an executive order to encourage and promote tourism from China.
VUAs are not included in the pastillas scheme, Immigration Commissioner Morente told me, as their visas were precleared and preapproved by the Immigration bureau before their arrival in the country and after payment of required fees and charges.
Those who went through the pastillas scheme were the Chinese who did not apply for visas at the Philippine Embassy or consulates in China.
Empire has many Chinese clients; I smell professional jealousy or rivalry behind the company’s inclusion in the criminal scheme.
Why were the other agencies excluded in the charge sheet?
NB: I helped Liya Wu acquire her Filipino citizenship through the judicial process.
I stood as witness in court to her moral uprightness.
Wu has been helping the Ramon Tulfo Good Samaritan Foundation in feeding the hungry in these critical times.
It’s her way of showing her gratitude to the government for her Filipino citizenship.