Split personality

The Senate investigation into Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo, who is suspected of being a coddler of illegal gaming operators, brings to the spotlight the recurring problem of the ease of gaining a new identity in the Philippines, for the right price.

Guo, who is alleged to be a conduit in the financing of illegal Chinese gaming operations, had a mysterious identity that required the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to ascertain.

Guo and a Chinese passport holder named Guo Hua Ping are one and the same person based on an NBI comparison of their fingerprints.

The confusion about Guo’s identity is reminiscent of the matching of Davidson Bangayan and David Tan during the Senate’s 2014 investigation into the existence of a rice cartel that manipulated grain prices.

It took the NBI, a series of Senate inquiries, and the testimony of then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte to ascertain that rice trader Davidson Bangayan was the alleged grains smuggler David Tan.

Bangayan faced light charges, including one with a fine of not more than P6,000, while evading other sanctions, including from the Senate, which found him lying under oath.

There were also some instances when the Department of Justice, then under Leila de Lima, was suspected of consorting with Bangayan to shield him from detention.

Approaching the 2016 polls, the then-outgoing justice secretary did not file a complaint but instead directed the NBI to continue a case buildup on the smuggling raps against Bangayan “to allow investigators to gather more evidence.”

“We have to make sure it meets the probable cause threshold. When we evaluated Bangayan’s case, it was still not enough,” De Lima had said then.

Most officials, businessmen and even rice retailers in Mindanao had volunteered their testimonies to ascertain that Tan and Bangayan were one and the same.

When Bangayan went before the Senate, appearing cocky, knowing that somebody powerful had his back, he quickly earned an overnight detention for his arrogance.

The NBI then ordered Bangayan’s arrest after evidence was presented to the Senate committee on agriculture from a libel case against businessman Jess Arranza, obtained by then-Senate minority leader Juan Ponce Enrile, in which the trader admitted he was also David Tan.

Before his Senate appearance, Bangayan met with De Lima to deny that he was David Tan. His first NBI arrest papers even carried the clarification “Davidson Bangayan who is not David Tan.”

Like Guo, Bangayan seemed to be pulling influential strings as he evaded detention at the Senate after being cited in contempt.

Then Senate minority leader Enrile expressed his displeasure over the decision of the investigating panel not to detain the purported smuggling kingpin. The senators left it to the NBI to pursue the case against Bangayan.

It was upon Enrile’s manifestation that the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food held Bangayan in contempt for lying about his identity.

“I told them (committee members) that he had lied to the Senate. It was up to the committee if they wanted to accept that because if they would establish that precedent, then everybody can lie here,” Enrile said in admonishing his peers.

The minority leader, who happens to be a lawyer, pointed out that criminal acts such as perjury are different from the offense committed by Bangayan, which was lying under oath, that should have been meted an appropriate sanction.

“That’s a different matter. That’s perjury. That is a criminal act but the insult, the affront to the committee for lying even though he was confronted with evidence, was separate and distinct from the criminal offense,” Enrile said.

The words of caution from Enrile thus reverberate in the case of Guo who continues to evade Senate summonses and whose whereabouts remain a mystery.

The ease by which identities are manufactured in the country, legally, makes the work of crooks who manufacture fake identification papers such as passports redundant.

Regulations must be tightened, particularly for foreign individuals who change their names, which is a common practice to evade harassment or, in some cases, escape legal complications.

The light penalties for those carrying multiple identities also work in favor of criminals as the gains outweigh the risks.