The Embassy of Italy in the Philippines has vouched for the authenticity of the visa denial letters issued by its third-party service provider to Filipino job applicants "scammed" by Alpha Assistenza SRL.

Responding to DAILY TRIBUNE's query, the embassy said the possibility of the Philippine Interactive Audiotext Services Inc. or PIASI being in cahoots with the scammers is "extremely unlikely."

"In the course of our fruitful and long-standing cooperation with PIASI, we have never received any kind of complaint nor had any reason to doubt the correctness and transparency of their work," said Consular Officer Matteo Mascia, who heads the embassy's visa office.

PIASI, Mascia said, is "limited to receiving visa applications and forwarding them to our office, without therefore being able to express any kind of judgment on the files themselves or on the attached documentation, which are processed and analyzed exclusively by embassy staff."

"It is therefore clear, without in any way detracting from the work carried out by our collaborators, that these are tasks of a constrained and rather mechanical nature, which leave very little room for maneuver for any ill-intentioned infiltrators within the ranks of the company in question," he added.

Mascia reiterated that all visa procedures are "scrupulously tracked, and the income received by PIASI [is] duly accounted for." He said that none of the information they had received from the allegedly defrauded applicants pointed to any misconduct on the part of PIASI.

Likewise, the rejection letters received by the visa applicants, who were provided bogus nulla osta or work permits by Alpha Assistenza, were genuine, Mascia pointed out.
"The attached rejection letter appears to be a copy of a decision actually produced by our office," he said.

Nonetheless, Mascia said, "the alleged irregularities raised (e.g., the visa applicant's name had been entered by hand) are indeed an exception to the standard format for national visa refusals (Type D) drawn up by this office," he added.

"The use of such format is necessary for reasons of time-saving, given the high (and unusual) number of rejections that our office has to produce within a few days, thus making it preferable to adopt a pre-printed form that is subsequently filled in with the applicant's salient data, the protocol number and the round stamp of the embassy, and then signed, as required by Italian law, by the head of the office that adopted the act or by a person delegated by him/her."

The 21 September episode of DAILY TRIBUNE's Usapang OFW show interviewed several complainants against Alpha Assistenza headed by co-CEOs Krizelle Respicio and Frederick Dutaro. They decried the alleged slow action of the Philippine consulate in Milan to the complaints of their sponsors in Italy.