{"id":6231,"date":"2020-03-01T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=6231"},"modified":"2020-04-07T15:06:50","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T05:06:50","slug":"immigration-officers-sacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=6231","title":{"rendered":"Immigration Officers sacked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As seen on the March 2020 issue of Philippine Tribune<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Philippine President Duterte has ordered the sacking of all immigration officers and employees at the Philippine International Airport. The officials were allegedly involved in a bribery scheme that allowed hundreds of thousands of Chinese to illegally enter the country to work for Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos). A whistleblower unravelled more details of the airport payoffs during a Senate hearing last month.

\u201cThe President considers this anomaly, now commonly known as \u2018pastillas scheme.\u2019 It is a serious form of corruption which cannot be tolerated by the government,\u201d said presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo.

\u201cAny official or employee who commits any wrong in the performance of their duties shall be meted out the punishment they deserve and in accordance with our penal laws,\u201d he said.

\u201cThe present situation in the Bureau of Immigration (BI), as well as how it is being run by Commissioner Jaime Morente, will be taken up in the next Cabi-net meeting,\u201d Panelo added.

The presidential spokesman told media that the President had \u201creceived reports\u201d about the racket and \u201cfound prima facie, or probable cause\u201d against the BI personnel.

He did not say how many were sacked, but BI spokesperson Dana Sandoval said 19 were immediately relieved of their duties \u201cin compliance with the directive of the President.\u201d

Morente earlier removed five senior airport immigration officers from their posts for \u201ccommand responsibility.\u201d

The money-making scheme, also involved Filipino and Chinese travel agencies. Senator Risa Hontiveros, called it a \u201cpastillas operation\u201d as the bribe money was usually rolled up like the popular milk candy.

Under the scheme, corrupt immigration officers in connivance with tour operators provided \u201cVIP treatment\u201d to Chinese who want to work for Pogos illegally for a service fee of at least P10,000.

Immigration Officer Allison \u201cAlex\u201d Chiong, who was assigned at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia), said syndicates within the BI even competed against each other to gain favour with travel agencies. The travel agencies provided the names of Chinese willing to pay for VIP treatment.

Hontiveros said Chiong, who has received death threats, was granted immunity for disclosing details of the payoffs.

The immigration officer said he decided to speak up because he felt that his fellow BI workers \u201chave been enslaved by this corrupt system.\u201d

\u201cI feel this is an invasion,\u201d he said, referring to the several thousands of Chinese workers who have entered the country since 2016.

Each immigration officer involved in the scheme at Naia Terminal 1 received P20,000 weekly, and P8,000 weekly for those at Terminal 3, he said.

The rate for these arrangements was around P50,000 to P200,000 per head and the package includes hassle-free departure, he said. Commissioner Jaime Morente said he was glad about the expose made by Chiong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(inq.net)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As seen on the March 2020 issue of Philippine Tribune Philippine President Duterte has ordered the sacking of all immigration officers and employees at the Philippine International Airport. The officials were allegedly involved in a bribery scheme that allowed hundreds of thousands of Chinese to illegally enter the country to work for Philippine offshore gaming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":6232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6233,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6231\/revisions\/6233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}