5 Manila cops in ransom theft surrender

MANILA, Philippines -  Five Manila Police District policemen who allegedly stole more than P10 million in ransom paid by a Malaysian businessman surrendered at the MPD headquarters yesterday.

Senior Inspector Peter Nerviza, Senior Police Officer 3 Ernesto Peral­ta, Police Officers 3 Mike Ongpauco and Jefferson Britanico, and PO1 Rommel Ocampo claimed they were not hiding, but preferred to surrender only to Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim.

A source privy to the surrender negotiations said one of the policemen’s three lawyers tapped Chief Inspector Ferdinand Marcelino from the Office of the Vice President to negotiate with Chief Inspector Alexander Navarrete, chief of the MPD’s criminal records management and evidence section and a godson of Lim.

Navarrete formed a team – composed of SPO4 Fernando Cantillas, SPO2 Felix Alquiros, SPO1 Romeo Saavedra and PO3 Ernesto Segismundo — and fetched the five policemen at around 8 a.m. yesterday along Ramon Magsaysay Boulevard near its intersection with V. Mapa street in Sta. Mesa, Manila.

“The meeting was discussed discreetly since some ‘interested’ individuals might sabotage the surrender, (resulting) in a bloody encounter,” Navarrete said.

Their surrender came a day after a shoot-to-kill order was issued by Lim. The five policemen, however, said they were not hiding and their decision to surrender was not because of the order, but that they wanted to clear their names.

“We want to prove that we had nothing to do with the disappearance of the ransom money,” Nerviza, chief of the MPD Station 5 anti-crime unit, said.

The five are now under the custody of MPD director Chief Superintendent Roberto Rongavilla after being brought to Lim’s office.

Nerviza said he and his men did not take the ransom money, but they have evidence that the ransom paid by businessman Eric Sim Chin Tong had been divided by the suspects.

He said they were not able to make an inventory of the evidence recovered from the suspects since they were on a follow-up operation to arrest the rest of those involved in Tong’s kidnap.

Nerviza also denied reports that they escaped from the MPD’s general assignments section just as they were about to be investigated. “There were no charges against us, so we were free to leave,” he said.

At the press conference yesterday, Lim said it is the word of the suspects – particularly alleged mastermind Marlon Lopera – against the word of the policemen on the missing money. Lopera claimed they put a hood on his head when he told them the ransom was packed in a bag in his hotel room.

Lim ordered Rongavilla to account for or find the missing money.

Authorities said the total amount of the money that disappeared is P10.6 million, not P12.1 million as earlier reported, since the P1.3 million added to the P15 million paid to Tong’s kidnappers was allegedly not taken out of the hotel room vault.

Lim said one of the issues that the five policemen need to clarify is why there was a delay in the turnover of the money from the hotel, when the police station was only 10 minutes away.