The Office of the Ombudsman has filed graft charges before the Sandiganbayan against 42 personnel of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) involved in the controversial "pastillas" bribery scam.
In 17-page information released to the media on Tuesday, the Ombudsman charged the officials including former Immigration deputy commissioner Marc Red Mariñas, previously tagged as the mastermind of the scam, for violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
Also charged was Liya Wu of Empire International Travel and Tours, to "willfully, unlawfully and give unwarranted benefits, preference or advantage to foreign passengers, particularly Chinese nationals."
According to the Ombudsman, the immigration officers have "allowed the entry of foreign passengers into the country without going through regular and stringent profiling or screening processes in violation of existing immigration rules and procedures to the prejudice of the government and public interest."
The group allegedly collected a fee of P10,000 per passenger for a total amount of P1.43 million, in violation of Section 3 of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
Other immigration officials charged with graft include Senior Immigration Officers Grifton Medina, Edwin Ortañez, and Glenn Comia, among others.
First uncovered in 2020, the bribery scheme allegedly provided an advantage to foreign travelers, especially Chinese nationals, to enter the Philippines without conducting background checks in exchange for money, rolled up using bond paper, earning the name "pastillas".
"Bosses or Chinese suppliers acted as conduits between the travel agencies and the immigration officers manning the immigration counters at NAIA Terminals 1 and 2. They receive a list of passenger names from travel agencies and cascade said list to the administrators of Viber chat groups," the information read.
"The bosses or Chinese suppliers receive the regular pay-outs from travel agencies usually wrapped like the local candy pastillas and then caused the distribution of the shares to the pastillas to the different members of the pastillas scheme," it added.
Bail has been set at PHP 90,000 each.
Senator Risa Hontiveros, the chairperson of the Senate panel that investigated the scheme, welcomed the filing of charges against the immigration officers.
"I am happy that our findings of our Senate Committee on Women were agreed upon by the Ombudsman. This is a victory for the women and the youth who fell victims to human trafficking, especially those who bravely testified on their plight like Carina and Ivy," she said.
"This shows that Senate Committee hearings can be a force for good, and the Senate can do good work to aid law enforcement agencies to fight corruption," she added.
However, Hontiveros appealed to Ombudsman Samuel Martires to consider Jeffrey Dale Ignacio, an Immigration Officer III, as a whistleblower and not among those charged, given that his testimony had been key in unearthing such a scheme.
"The Senate committee thanked Dale [for his testimony] and it is in the Committee Report adopted unanimously by the Senate," she said.
