A former commissioner and an examiner of the Bureau of Immigration are being sought to appear before a House of Representatives as five of its ranking officials, including three lawyers, were grilled in an inquiry on alleged anomalous transactions, coinciding with the separate probe in the Senate recently.
House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability Chair Johnny Ty Pimentel summoned former BI Commissioner Ronaldo Geron and Menardo Magno, a fingerprint examiner, in connection with the House Resolution No. 292 filed by Rep. Rosanna Vergara (3rd District, Nueva Ecija) which called for an inquiry on the “illegal practices” in the Bureau.
Pimentel asked the committee secretariat to get from the BI the whereabouts of Geron who stepped down and was replaced by new Commissioner Jaime Morente last June. Magno remains with the office.
The BI officials faced a panel that included lawyers Estanislao Canta, of the board of special inquiry who represented Morente, Cris Villalobos, and Maricel Salcedo-Sulit and Maria Rholyn Uy and Ma. Alexis Gracieta Maceda.
In her resolution, Vergara said Geron, together with Sulit, Villalobos, Maceda and Doroteo-Uy “tampered with the immigration documents to aid the disqualification cases filed against her by a certain Philip Piccio.
She was referring to a letter Geron supposedly issued to Piccio “stating that the Bureau had no documents pertaining to the renunciation of Rep. Vergara’s foreign citizenship” while “the truth of the matter is that Rep. Vergara has the original documents relating to her renunciation of foreign citizenship.”
Vergara was a dual citizen until she renounced her foreign citizenship on Sept. 4, 2015, prior to the filing of her certificate of candidacy in Oct. 2015, House records showed.
Villalobos and Maceda got the ire of the solons when they supposedly washed their hands off the controversy with both the them denying hands on the letters or certification issued by Geron.
Villalobos who was, based on a borrower’s slip, asked by Geron to get the entire folder of Vergara’s RA 9225 record from the records section, said he never got hold of the documents. “It was not given to me, l the chief of the record section brought the records directly to commissioner Geron,” Villalobos said.
Villalobos said that as a technical assistant he was in charge in the scrutiny of documents before Geron sign them. But he said Vergara’s records were not among them.
Maceda, on the other hand, disowned the signature above her name on a June 2016 certification saying it was Magno, her alternate signatory.
This was in connection with Maceda issuing two separate certifications, first in Dec. 2015 and then June 2016, with different contents. The first being certified “photocopies of the records on file” and the other “machine copy of the photocopy of files in this office.”
Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, airing disbelief on Villalobos claim, said the lawyer should not have been a technical assistant but Geron’s “running errand.”
Deputy Speaker Gwendolyn Garcia assailed Maceda for disclaiming the signature noting that there was not mark in the document to show it was not hers. Beside, she said, any official or division head must be responsible for everything that happens within his or her turf.
“I am rather mystified that the responsibility for signing a particular official document seems to be shifting from one person to another,” she said.
A result of a BI investigation submitted to the committee showed Vergara’s application “was duly processed and approved” under RA 9225 but the legislator said she pursued the House inquiry because of reports that several other people were victimized under the scheme.
“I believe there are BI officials who connived with Philip Piccio to make my original documents disappear,” Vergara said.
Piccio, whom Vergara described as lackey of her rival former Gov. Aurelio Umali, was not in the list of invited guests.
