Revealed: Fake gun permit racket

A meat dealer from Quezon City has admitted being behind the circulation of bogus permits to carry firearms outside residence (PTCFORs), which he offers mostly to Chinese gun enthusiasts in Binondo, Manila.

The suspect, Noel Binuya, 37 of 64 12th Avenue Murphy. Quezon City, said he earned P100,000 in the racket. He claimed he needed the money to pay for the treatment of his sick father.

Binuya is not in any way connected with the Philippine National Police (PNP).

But he admitted being a close friend of the owners of Kymtech, the company in charge and responsible for the manufacture and printing of PNP licenses and PTCFOR identification cards since March 2003.

PNP chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. ordered a thorough probe of the PTCFOR anomaly after Superintendent Ricardo Marquez, chief PTCFOR secretariat, recovered four gun permits issued under mysterious circumstances.

Marquez reported that even before the Lenten season, PTCFOR ID cards were being processed and issued for corresponding fees ranging from P12,000 to P16,000 each. The permits, which were still subject to verification, had serial numbers from 03040567 to 03040600.

The legitimate numbers issued for the month of April was only up to 03040264.

Upon receipt of Marquez’s report, Ebdane appealed to the holders of fake gun permits to surrender their documents to the PNP since they were all bogus.

He advised the public to transact business only with the Office of the Secretariat for their gun permits to avoid being victimized by syndicates.

Initial results of the investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) showed that three persons, Binuya; his nephew, Janiel Mangalino, and May Rabang, had access in the delivery of gun permit application forms to Marquez’s office.

In his statement dated May 23, Binuya claimed he singlehandedly pulled off the racket by taking advantage of the lax handling of the documents and by the bad practice that presumes all documents from Marquez’s office are all approved.

Kedith Morato, one of the owners of Kymtech, admitted having exclusive rights in the printing and production of PTCFOR ID cards. Two others, Argelo Rabang, 20, an encoder and one Bryan Ty, assist him in the task, he said.

Morato claimed no written contract was forged between his company and the PNP.

According to Morato, they picked up processed applications from Marquez’s office, which usually bears the signature of Ebdane and the control numbers duly assigned by the Office of the Secretariat, before printing them.

Binuya admitted he inserted more or less 20 application forms for printing by Kymtech without prior knowledge of the people in charge of the PTCFOR ID cards.

Morato denied having a hand in the irregularity, saying he never conspired with Binuya.

Mangalino and Rabang corroborated Morato’s statement.

But Ebdane is not convinced that Binuya had acted on his own.

The PNP chief ordered Senior Superintendent Francisco Don Montenegro, chief of the National Capital Region of the CIDG, to dig deeper into the irregularity and unmask the syndicate’s mastermind.