More criminal charges have been lodged against dismissed Mayor Alice Guo and five of her cohorts by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) before the Department of Justice (DOJ) as announced in a press briefing on Thursday.
Lawyer Elmer Galicia, Dante Catapay, Cheryl Medina, Catherine Salazar, and Geraldine Pepito have been named the respondents, aside from Guo. They have been indicted for falsification by a notary public, the use of falsified documents, perjury, and obstruction of justice.
These charges stem from a motion filed by Guo’s camp in a separate arraignment, this time for qualified trafficking. Lawmakers concurred Guo did not sign the counter-affidavit as she had fled the country prior to the notarization of the document.
NBI Fraud and Financial Crimes Division Chief and head of Task Force Alice Guo Palmer Mallari said his team had examined a collection of Guo’s signatures and arrived at the conclusion that the signatures prior to the notarization and in the notarized document were not made by one person only, or that Guo did not sign the counter-affidavit.
“So what we did was we collected sample specimen signatures on original documents before the municipality of Bamban, Tarlac ... and we also collected sample specimen signatures purportedly signed subsequent to the date of the counter-affidavit. This is for the purposes of submitting that to our Questioned Documents Division (QDD),” Mallari told the press.
“And true enough, after the examination conducted by our QDD, it was proven that the samples ... appearing on all those documents, as compared to the supposed signature appearing on the counter-affidavit, were actually not written by one and the same person,” he said.
He added that if the document had passed through Guo’s hands, her fingerprints would have also been on it.
The DOJ’s Secretary Jesus Remulla was adamant that the administrative complaint versus notary public Galicia should be pursued.
NBI Director Jaime Santiago also denounced the practice Guo’s staff has of keeping signed “last pages” to be joined with filings for Guo, saying this was “unacceptable” and that affidavits have to be signed before the notary public.
