Cop keeping couple from Canada faces contempt

The police officer taking custody of the Filipino couple deported from Canada defied a court order Friday to bring the detainees for their arraignment and transfer to another jail. As a consequence, Police Superintendent Constante Agpaoa faces contempt of court that partakes the nature of a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment and fine. Judge Evelyn Corpus Cabochan of the Quezon City regional trial court Branch 98 issued a “show cause" order against Agpaoa for his failure to bring Janice Florence del Rosario and her husband Kaye Gravador del Rosario to court. The court also sent a separate but similar order for the police official’s failure to report the couple’s arrest upon their deportation. The court gave Agpaoa 72 hours from receipt of the “show cause" orders to submit a written report to explain and justify his actions defying its summons. Janice, 44, and her husband Kaye, 33, were deported on January 21 from Toronto, Canada after the Canadian government denied their application for refugee status. Agpaoa immediately arrested the couple as they stepped out of the plane at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) with their children aged 13 and 8. The court ordered Agpaoa on Thursday to “produce" the couple in court at 8:30 a.m. Friday for arraignment on estafa cases Agpaoa himself filed in 2003 and for the reading of the service of sentence on eight counts of estafa for which Janice was convicted in 1998. Agpaoa accused the couple of defrauding him of P7.16 million in investments in a “re-discounting" loan scheme that would have earned 10 percent monthly interest. At about 9:30 a.m., Agpaoa sent a text message to Dr. Richard Dizon that they have left the police precinct to bring the couple to court. Dizon, director of the medical/dental services of the House of Representatives, was a complainant in the estafa cases for which Janice had been convicted in the same court in 1998. He texted Dr. Dizon again at around 10:30 a.m., saying he was waiting for a call from the couple’s lawyer, former senator Rene Saguisag, before he takes them out of detention. Saguisag did not call. The court waited until 11 a.m. for Agpaoa to present the del Rosarios but he was a no-show. The court would have issued the “commitment order" for the couple. It would have moved Janice to either the Quezon City jail’s female dormitory or the Correctional Institute for Women in Mandaluyong City, and Kaye to the Quezon City jail. Saguisag asked the court to give him until Monday to consult with Janice if she would want to be jailed in Quezon City or at the women’s correctional facility in Mandaluyong City. “We cannot do anything. This is already a conviction. What I can do is to appeal for commitment in a more humane detention," Saguisag later told GMANews.TV. Saguisag stipulated to the assertion of Prosecutor Donald Lee that Janice Florence del Rosario and Flordeliza Kong Pace Tayzon were one and the same person. Flordeliza Kong Pace Tayzon was the name del Rosario used in her dealings with Dizon and his wife Jennifer in 1994. She used other aliases such as Flordeliza Tayzon, Flor Kong Pace, Janet C. del Rosario and Janeth del Rosario in her transactions before she disappeared in March 2003. Prosecutor Lee said he "entertains doubts and suspicions" on Agpaoa's defiance of the court order to present the couple for arraignment and reading of the verdict of conviction. Jennifer Dizon said Agpaoa apparently did not want to let the del Rosarios be taken from his custody until he could recover his "investments." The court took notice of the conviction of del Rosario in Branch 58 of the San Juan metropolitan trial court in July 1997 involving eight counts of estafa, or violation of Batas Pambansa 22, known as the bouncing checks law. She used the name Flor Kong Pace in the San Juan case where she defrauded jeweler Dely Tan of P1.7 million worth of jewelry in 1994. She was meted a total of four years imprisonment in the San Juan case, plus indemnity equivalent to the amount swindled. In the Dizon case, the sentence was one year imprisonment for each count, for a total of eight years jail term, plus indemnity equivalent to P338,165. Saguisag said he was "shocked" to find out that Janice had convictions in the Dizon and Tan cases, plus more than 90 other complaints of estafa pending in different courts in the Philippines. Judge Cabochan said the del Rosarios owe Saguisag an explanation why there was no full disclosure of the cases filed against them. "They should have told you everything," she told Saguisag. At one point, Saguisag blamed the media for publicizing the complaints against her clients. "Smear campaign is not helpful," he said. According to him, the couple could have paid back their "investors" had the case not been publicized. Later, he told GMANews.TV that the couple could not pay up their obligations because all their accounts had been frozen, and that they have children to provide for. He claimed that the del Rosario's younger sons aged 13 and 8 were having difficulty adjusting to life in a depressed area somewhere in Metro Manila. He said the children complained of mosquito bites. The Dizon couple and Mrs Tan appealed to Saguisag to be concerned not just about the del Rosario children but also about the families whose future they have destroyed when they ran away with their life savings. The couple had also been charged with four counts of fraud and falsification of documents in Toronto, Canada for defrauding their friends there with at least C$2 million between August and October 2006. The Canadian police entertained their complaints only after the couple had been deported to Manila. - GMANews.TV