Pharmacy owner meted jail term for fake permit

An owner of a pharmacy in Bayawan City, Negros Oriental, was meted a two years and four months in jail after he was found guilty for operating his business under a falsified license.

Municipal Trial Court in Cities judge Anatalio Necesario ruled that Marcelo Fua was guilty beyond reasonable doubt for falsifying a public document and make it appear the Bureau of Food and Drugs issued such for his drugstore business.

BFAD supervisor Ester Jimenez said Fua was not in the list of people or pharmacy owners who were granted permit to sell drugs but he was found operating with a license that BFAD supposedly issued to him.

The discovery of Fua's illegal permit to sell pharmaceutical products came by chance when the mayor of Bayawan City invited BFAD supervisor Ester Jimenez and her team to the city to conduct a lecture on traditional medicine.

The mayor allowed the BFAD team to inspect the documents submitted to his office involving purchases of drugs. At this point, Jimenez discovered that some of the drugs purchased did not come from a legitimate supplier or registered dealer.

Jimenez made verifications and was certain that the MBF Drugstore of Fua was never a BFAD-accredited dealer of drugs. Fua claimed the BFAD regional office issued the permit to him but when asked for the original copy of such, he failed to produce it.

It was later found out that Fua managed to secure a copy of a BFAD certificate of suppliers accreditation for Longway Commercial, owned by Eugenio Javier of P. Del Rosario Ext. Cebu City.

Javier admitted giving copies of his documents to Fua's wife Marilyn, his customer who earlier convinced him to a business deal for selling pharmaceutical products in Bayawan under the name of Longway Commercial.

But after giving Marilyn his business documents, consisting of invoices and BFAD accreditation and Department of Trade and Industry permits, she stopped buying drugs from him, said Javier.

These documents were later found tampered with and made to appear that Fua was a BFAD accredited drug dealer.

During the trial, Fua tried to push his innocence of the crime saying he was not the one who altered the documents and his pharmacy business had been entrusted to his wife and daughter, a pharmacist.

But Necesario said that Fua's contentions "were not only self-serving, but as a ploy to escape his criminal liability and therefore, devoid of merit."

Necesario cited a Supreme Court ruling that states: "When a person has in his possession a falsified document and makes use of the same, the presumption or inference is justified that such a person is the forger." - Rene U. Borromeo