AUSTRALIAN Federal Police (AFP) raided the Bohol Boxing Stable in Sydney’s southwest on Thursday, October 21, following a Sydney Morning Herald website report on Wednesday, October 20, that a family in NSW was now under investigation for allegedly recruiting Filipino boxers to fight in Australia and ”keeping the men in slave-like conditions in a Sydney garage”.
Police interviewed the stable’s owners over three hours as part of the investigation.
The stable’s spokesman Dido Bohol said the raid was a traumatic experience for his family. ”There were about half a dozen police here, and family members were not allowed to move freely in our own house,” Mr Bohol said. ”They took contracts and other stuff with them.”
According to the Herald’s Canberra reporter Yuko Narushima, the Department of Immigration had confirmed that it was investigating complaints against a stable of boxers in the western suburbs of Sydney.
Liberal senator Eric Abetz had initially raised the allegations at a Senate committee in Canberra and had sought more information on the special sports visas on which the men came to Australia, the report said.
Mr Bohol’s wife Julie said she felt so shaken that she feared a heart attack would come. ”And it was so embarrassing. The allegations were inaccurate and unfair. We treated the boxers like our own children.”
Mr Bohol said the stable’s management had done everything right for Filipino boxers who wanted to campaign in Australia. ”The stable has been bringing boxers here for 20 years now, and some of them have returned to settle here as fine citizens.”
At press time, no further developments on the investigation were at hand.
The Herald reporter was quoted as saying that the NSW Government’s Combat Sports Authority was aware of the complaints.
The four men bringing the complaints were originally from Cebu in the Philippines, the report said, and had alleged being stripped of their passports on arrival in Australia and forced into domestic servitude washing dishes, cleaning toilets and minding children. ?