ANGELES CITY – Seventeen counts of cyber libel were filed Monday afternoon at the Office of the City Prosecutor here against Daily Tribune by the consul general of the Philippines in Milan, Italy.
Consul General Elmer G. Cato filed the P10-million defamation suit against the Manila newspaper for violation of Section 4 of RA 10175 (Cybercrime Prevention Law of 2012) in relation to Articles 353 and 355 (Libel) of the Revised Penal Code. This, owing to Daily Tribune falsely accusing the consul of coddling the owners of an immigration consultancy firm in Milan that is being investigated for allegedly defrauding hundreds of Filipinos applying for jobs in Italy.
Named respondents were Willie Fernandez, president of Concept and Information Group Inc., publisher of Daily Tribune, editors and reporters of the publication, and several other individuals.
The complaint stemmed from a series of news reports and commentary published in both print and online editions of Daily Tribune and its sister publication Dyaryo Tirada that accused Cato of dereliction of duty and corruption for supposedly sitting on the complaints of Filipinos who claim to have been defrauded by the Filipino-owned Alpha Assistenza SRL.
The publication, Cato said, based its repeated allegations on the statements made by Vanessa Antonio, Enrique Catilo, and Apple Cabasis who are among the more than 200 applicants in the Philippines who paid Alpha Assistenza more than P20 million for what they said were nonexistent jobs in Italy.
In his complaint, Cato accused Daily Tribune of waging a disinformation campaign against him, saying the allegations that he sat on the complaints were fabricated and based on hearsay.
He said Antonio, Catilo, and Cabasis could not accuse the Consulate in Milan of sitting on their complaints as they could not have filed any because they are in the Philippines. The three are also respondents in the cyber libel case.
Cato also said that some of those quoted by Daily Tribune include individuals who have already disowned the statements attributed to them.
He also accused Daily Tribune of deliberately omitting in its reporting factual information, including official statements from the Department of Foreign Affairs, that would disprove the alleged inaction that the publication kept on insisting. “The series of articles and commentary published by Daily Tribune beginning in September were part of a narrative that was all made up to depict Consul General Cato as a negligent, insensitive, incompetent, and corrupt diplomat who should be removed from his position because he is an embarrassment to the foreign service,” Cato’s counsel Jocelyn Martinez-Clemente said in a statement.
“The fact that 92 complaints of aggravated fraud have been filed against Alpha Assistenza before the Office of the Public Prosecutor in Milan is proof enough that the Consulate was not sleeping on the job,” she noted.
According to Martinez-Clemente, Cato was dragged into the controversy because of business rivalry among Filipino-owned agencies in Milan called “patronatos” and his announced intention to regulate these companies to put a stop to the exorbitant fees being charged for services rendered to Filipino clients.
