‘Come home, face the charges!’

Senator Raffy Tulfo on Tuesday urged Krizelle Respicio, one of the owners of Alpha Assistenza SRL accused of scamming hundreds of Filipinos in Italy and the Philippines, to come home and face the charges against her and her alleged cohorts.

Tulfo issued the challenge to Respicio, who claimed she and co-CEO Frederick Dutaro are not hiding, during the second hearing of the Senate Committee on Migrant Workers on the alleged massive illegal recruitment activities of Alpha Assistenza.

Respicio and Dutaro are co-respondents in the complaints filed by dozens of Alpha Assistenza victims in Manila before the Department of Justice with the help of the National Bureau of Investigation.

She attended the second hearing of the Senate Migrant Workers Committee headed by Senator Tulfo via video-conferencing.

“If you are really clean, and you did not do anything wrong, clear your name. Face the charges filed against you. Since you’ve left, flight is (a sign of) guilt,” Tulfo told Respicio.

The estimated hundreds of Alpha victims, both in the Philippines and Italy, who lost at least 2,500 euros each (about P151,000), brought their complaints before DAILY TRIBUNE’s digital show Usapang OFW.

Since a series of episodes by Usapang OFW and TRIBUNE articles since September documenting the complaints, the NBI, DoJ and the Department of Migrant Workers have helped the Alpha “victims” try to get justice.

Alpha Assistenza allegedly duped Filipinos by promising to secure what later turned out to be non-existent jobs under Italy’s “decreto flussi” program.

Face the music

“I know you’re a permanent resident there, but it doesn’t stop you from coming home and facing the music, as they say. Face the charges filed against you,” Tulfo told Respicio, who attended the hearing virtually.

The Bureau of Immigration previously confirmed reports that Respicio and Dutaro have already left the Philippines through Saudi Arabia.

“I just want to clarify that first of all, we did not escape. We were told by our lawyer here in Europe to face the charges against us [here] because we are permanent residents here in Europe,” she said.

But Tulfo insisted that Respicio should come home even as she claimed she was unaware of any complaints against her when she left the Philippines in December.

However, before Respicio’s appearance at the DoJ on 5 October 2023, the first batch of Alpha victims had already gone to see Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla to file their complaints on 28 September.

Remulla met with Usapang OFW hosts Ma. Bettina Fernandez and Allan Hernandez, who accompanied the complainants to the DoJ, to assure the victims that justice would be served.

The lawyers of the complainants informed the Tulfo committee that 77 consolidated cases had been filed against Respicio at the prosecution level before the DoJ. In Italy, about 90 complaints had been filed against Alpha, according to Department of Foreign Affair officials.

During the hearing, DAILY TRIBUNE president Willie Fernandez brushed off a question by Cayetano whether the paper ventilating the complaints of the “victims” was a PR (public relations) demolition job against Philippine Consul General Elmer Cato, or something done out of journalism fervour.

PR line

Cayetano segued to his PR line of questioning after Fernandez denied he was presently engaged in the recruitment of workers for deployment abroad, seemingly to impute motive as to the alleged hatchet job against Cato.

“You do run a PR company?” Cayetano asked Fernandez, positing that there may be a conflict of interest between newspapering and PR. Fernandez said he gave up public relations when he acquired DAILY TRIBUNE.

“Sir, when I became the publisher, president actually. I stopped practicing PR. Whenever people reach us, we just accept documents, publishing them free of charge,” Fernandez said.

Cayetano maintained Fernandez was still in PR, averring that “during Duterte’s time, I know for a fact that you were active as a PR. So, you were a PR while you were a publisher.”

Fernandez flatly denied Cayetano’s accusation, with a terse but emphatic, “That’s not true.” Further, Fernandez said he was a PR in 2016, before his company Concept and Information Group, acquired DAILY TRIBUNE in 2018.

“No. I was not a PR (now or in 2018), sir. I was in PR (in 2016) like when you ran for the vice presidency,” Fernandez said, referring to Cayetano’s losing bid as the running mate of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

“I was helping you,” Fernandez told Cayetano. “I was helping the Duterte administration.”

With Cayetano insisting that Fernandez doing so would make him a PR practitioner, the DAILY TRIBUNE executive stressed that he was never paid espousing causes, ditto with his newspaper.

In response to a subpoena duces tecum issued by the committee, DAILY TRIBUNE submitted copies of its conversations with Cato, belying his claim that the paper did not contact him to get his side after several of the complainants first appeared on Usapang OFW on 21 September 2023.

With the documents, the paper submitted a video showing the timeline of the Alpha complainants coming out in the open to contest a claim by Cato in a 7 September 2023 Usapang OFW interview that he was doing something about the complaints.

The complainants said they first called attention about the Alpha “scam” and the alleged inaction of Cato before other media entities and several government agencies to no avail.

They have thanked DAILY TRIBUNE for ventilating their sad fate even if in doing so, as stated by Usapang OFW host Ma. Bettina Fernandez, the paper is now facing a cyber libel complaint.

The paper, through DivinaLaw, has provided the complainants with legal representation in their complaints against Alpha and in defending themselves against the cyber libel charges against them by Cato.

“Now, we’re facing a libel case and we’re being painted by a few as the villains. That’s the price of journalism, par for the course,” Ms. Fernandez said, echoing the paper’s mantra, “Without Fear, Without Favor.”