Some employees of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) have informed Justice Secretary Leila de Lima that some top officials of the agency are engaged in a racket that enables undesirable aliens to enter and leave the country by allegedly bribing BI officials.
The employees, who did not identify themselves for fear of retribution, called the scheme “entry for a fee, fly for a fee,” which they said have been going on for some time under the noses or connivance of top officials.
The bureau is headed by Commissioner Siegfred Mison who, along with other immigration officials, is facing graft charges before the Office of the Ombudsman.
“The justice department, through the National Bureau of Investigation should look deeper into the anomaly even as graft charges have already been filed against Mison before the Office of the Ombudsman,” the BI employee said.
At the same time, the group also called on Mison to go on leave for “delicadeza” pending results of the investigation.
Mison and other BI officers were charged last April 21 with violation of Republic Act (RA) 6713 or The Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, violation of the Administrative Code of 1987 and violation of Commonwealth Act (CA)613 or the Philippine Immigration Act of 1940 before the Office of the Ombudsman.
The case filed by immigration intelligence officer Ricardo Cabochan against Mison and the other BI personnel stemmed from the illegal lifting from the bureau’s “blacklist order” of Chinese national Yuan Jian Chua alias Wilson Ong Cheng.
In his four-page affidavit, Cabochan said that Yuan was arrested by immigration officials on November 6, 2013 in Cebu City and deported on January 22, 2014 for being an undocumented alien and for “fraudulently representing himself to be a Philippine citizen” to evade the requirements of immigration laws.
As a consequence, the Chinese’s name was also included on the immigration’s blacklist, which barred him from re-entering the country for at least one year.
On March 11, 2015, Yuan arrived at the Ninoy Aquino Internatioal Airport (NAIA) Terminal I but was denied entry. But an hour later, he was allowed entry allegedly on the verbal instruction of Mison through his technical assistant Norman Tansinco.
Manila Bulletin
