P40 billion pocketed by corrupt BI officials – Hontiveros

MANILA, Philippines — A notorious “business model” of visa scams and other rackets in the Bureau of Immigration (BI) allowed corrupt officials to pocket an estimated P40 billion since 2017, Sen. Risa Hontiveros revealed yesterday.

Hontiveros made the disclosure at the resumption of the Senate inquiry into allegations of corruption and human trafficking at the BI, particularly the so-called “pastillas scam,” where bribe money is distributed in rolled paper that looks like the local delicacy.

She said the bulk of the suspected pocketed money came from illegal facilitation of arrivals of Chinese nationals through the so-called Visa Upon Arrival (VUA) and other schemes.

“There are corrupt officials in every corner of BI. In the ‘pastillas scam,’ we estimate that the masterminds were able to pocket P30 billion. That’s based on the arrival data of Chinese nationals on non-VUA,” Hontiveros said in Filipino.

“For VUA, which is another revenue stream, the kickbacks go straight into the pockets of some officials,” she said.

Figures provided by the bureau showed there have been about four million Chinese nationals who entered the country since 2017, which is comparable to more than the entire population of Quezon City.

The senator described the number as staggering.

Of these four million Chinese nationals, around 3.8 million were non-VUA applicants while around 150,000 were VUA applicants.

Around three million of these non-VUA applicants are believed to have paid the extra P10,000 service fee in the “pastillas” scam.

The hearing also heard again the testimonies of BI whistle-blowers Alex Chiong and Dale Ignacio.

Hontiveros pointed to former BI officials Maynardo Marinas and his son Marc as among the masterminds or key figures in the pastillas scam when he headed the Ports Operations Division of the agency.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the questionable VUA transactions, the bribe allegedly goes straight to the main office, where the visas are approved, she said.

After being cited in contempt in the previous hearing last Oct. 6, both Red and Maynardo attended the hearing yesterday and were given a chance to clarify their roles in the BI.

Hontiveros, however, stressed that the father and son were appointed heads of their respective divisions in July 2016 by then Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre.

About a year later, in 2017, Aguirre issued Department Order No. 41 which allowed the Chinese to enter the Philippines without having previously obtained a visa from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It had been established in previous hearings that VUAs were processed by travel agencies, many of whom only required a mere screen shot of the applicant’s passport sent through the WeChat app.

The person involved could have been trafficked by a syndicate, but as long as she or he had no derogatory record on paper, then that person would have been able to enter the country with a VUA.

However, the senator stressed the system may have started a corrupt “business model” which is now being unraveled.