The Justice department has not received any complaints against former University of Santo Tomas men’s basketball coach Aldin Ayo in connection with the controversial Sorsogon bubble training camp in June.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra made the clarification after University Athletic Association of the Philippines Executive Director Rebo Saguisag claimed that the pending separate probes by the department, Commission on Higher Education and the Department of Interior and Local Government had prevented it from acting on the plea of Ayo to immediately lift his indefinite suspension from the UAAP.
“As far as I know, no sworn complaint in a proper form as required for a preliminary investigation has been received by the DOJ,” Guevarra said in a text message to reporters.
He even admitted that the deparatmeant decided to return the report submitted by the CHED on the incident for being insufficient to warrant the conduct of a preliminary investigation.
The DOJ earlier expressed doubts over its jurisdiction to act on the CHED report, which is more an administrative matter than criminal one.
“We return the report on the incident to the CHED so that the people interested in pressing charges may bring it to the DOJ in the form of a sworn complaint sufficient to trigger a preliminary investigation,” Guevarra said.
In September, the UAAP decided to impose the sanction on Ayo for allegedly endangering the health and well-being of his players when he disregarded health and quarantine protocols by holding a training camp for his team in his home province.
But the UAAP said it merely based the sanction on the report submitted by the UST and not from any official investigation by government authorities.
Last month, the Philippine National Police-Sorsogon cleared Ayo of violation of health and quarantine protocols following an investigation requested by the Sorsogon provincial government led by Gov. Francis Escudero.
The PNP report said “the actions performed by former UST head coach Aldin V. Ayo is in accordance with the health protocol and guidelines” formulated by the existing Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Disease.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año earlier said the PNP report “would help a lot in clearing the controversy.”