Department of Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla on Tuesday directed the Bureau of Immigration to only issue employment visas to corporations duly registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The directive was in line with the information of “the proliferation of visas issued to fake corporations and sole proprietorships.”

“As a matter of policy, I’m asking the BI not to grant anymore visas to sole proprietorships but only to corporations that have the stamp of approval of the SEC,” said Remulla, adding that having information that many corporations that were petitioning 9G visas are fake corporations or non-entities which the law department of BI allowed.

The DoJ chief revealed that he is talking about more than 500 corporations and thousands of visas issued with the petitions of the corporations which have been presumed validated by the legal department and the visa issuing authority of the BI.

He also cited that many of the visas were used to get into Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators.

“The corporations were accepted hook, line and sinker without any validation,” Remulla said. “It is an affront to our sovereignty that these people have been issuing all of these to them.”

Remulla suspected that those involved in issuing the visas were “probably in cahoots because you are talking about due diligence as a matter of government policy in every transaction.”

He recalled that he had previously asked Immigration commissioner Norman Tansingco to reorganize the BI’s visa processing group without the involvement of the legal office as he lamented that the BI has been moving “very slow” to do it and recounted that he received information about the anomaly back in August and had it validated.