Senator Risa Hontiveros on Tuesday bared evidence linking Bureau of Immigration officials previously tagged as in the so-called “pastillas” bribery scheme to the outbound trafficking of Filipino women to Syria.
“It is clear this is already a business model wherein women to be sent as slaves in other countries were being deceived also by Filipinos. For P50,000 per Filipino women, our own officials put them in danger,” she said.
The senator earlier asked the bureau to furnish the names of the immigration officers who stamped the passports of the victims.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente identified them as Mark Darwin Talha, Nerissa Pineda, John Michael Angeles, and Ervin Ortañez.
Angeles and Ortañez both have ties to the masterminds behind the “pastillas” scam.
Angeles was one of the 86 BI officers charged by the National Bureau of Investigation in November last year over the bribery scheme.
Ortañez, on the other hand, is the son of Erwin Ortañez, then the overall Travel Control Enforcement Unit head during the term of former port operations chief Red Mariñas who allegedly masterminded the scheme.
During the hearing of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations, and Gender Equality, Hontiveros showed Viber screenshots from “pastillas” scam whistleblower Alex Chiong, which showed a list of names of women to be trafficked out of the country that was signed off by a certain “FM.”
Chiong identified “FM” as Fidel Mendoza, the alleged right hand man of Mariñas.
“Mendoza’s name has repeatedly been given by our whistleblowers as one of the suppliers of trafficked women. Same cast of characters, different crime,” Hontiveros said.
“Our women are abused in ways that approach crimes against humanity,” she added.
For his part, Senator Joel Villanueva underscored the importance of having agreements with countries that host overseas Filipino workers to prevent jobseekers from falling prey to human trafficking syndicates.
Villanueva, chair of the Senate labor committee, said bilateral agreements would allow the Philippine government to run after third-country recruiters who send Filipinos to perilous locations like Syria where a total ban on deployment has been in place since 2011.
“Under the bilateral labor agreements, there would be sufficient protection for our countrymen against human trafficking syndicates that prey on the situation of our workers,” Villanueva said.
“In our labor committee hearings, it has been well-established that the rise of third-country recruitment poses a huge threat to our ongoing efforts against illegal recruitment and human trafficking. The crafting of bilateral agreements to strengthen coordination would be one step to solve this,” he added.