THE authorities can be counted on to convert an otherwise successful operation such as the POGO (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator) raid in Las Piñas City into an embarrassing fiasco, with finger-pointing and charges of wrongdoing or inefficiency being hurled by one government agency against another.
The June 26, 2023 raid on Hong Tai Compound at No. 501 Alabang-Zapote Road, Almanza Uno, Las Piñas by the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) and Anti-Cybercrime Group joint police task force first became controversial when claims of abuse and manhandling of workers and executives of the firm, Xinchuang Network Technology Inc.
The company’s lawyer said that their foreign and local workers were duly documented and that the company abides by all legal requirements of the business, adding all documents covering company operations had been in the vault seized during the raid, which the authorities called a “rescue operation.”
‘A better and judicious way to iron out these problems is for Remulla and PNP chief Gen. Benjamin Acorda Jr. to sit down and coordinate their efforts against human trafficking and POGO-related crimes…’
The PNP said it rescued over 2,700 suspected trafficking victims, most of whom are foreigners, at the POGO establishment in Las Piñas but many of these workers had been released. Those who did not have proper visas were sent back to their home countries such as China and Vietnam while others would undergo the process of cancellation of their visas so they can return to their countries.
Xinchuang’s lawyer claimed that those who had been detained at the compound were not allowed to leave despite the government’s inability to file cases against these individuals, both Filipinos and foreigners.
In a press conference last Monday, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said five Chinese human trafficking suspects have been released for further investigation due to lack of evidence to pin them down. Complaints related to the raid are also still pending because evidence is not complete, the justice chief said.
The justice secretary said this was because the PNP-Anti-Cybercrime Group failed to coordinate with the DOJ before they conducted the raid. The way he said it, one could deduce that the justice department and the PNP-ACG have agreed that before they conduct raids, they should conduct a case buildup first so that when they make arrests, “we are sure that we have evidence against them.”
Remulla surmised that the police may have been used to making arrests without a case, but this will not be tolerated by the DOJ under his watch.
“The PNP-ACG did not identify specific acts and specific grounds in arresting persons. No specific complainants were also identified, but they went ahead with conducting the raid,” Remulla said.
While Remulla was holding his press briefing on the issue, Sen. Raffy Tulfo was also conducting his own press conference in the Senate, accusing certain officials of receiving bribes and/or haggling on the amounts needed to release the remaining arrested individuals. Tulfo vowed to start a Senate investigation on this latest POGO scandal, intending to summon to a public hearing all officials and agencies concerned with the incident.
A better and judicious way to iron out these problems is for Remulla and PNP chief Gen. Benjamin Acorda Jr. to sit down and coordinate their efforts against human trafficking and POGO-related crimes, which they have not done for almost two weeks after the controversial Las Piñas raid.
