‘5 in pastillas scam dismissed from BI’

MANILA, Philippines — A senior official of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) and four other officers convicted for involvement in the pastillas scheme have been dismissed from their posts after they lost their cases before the Court of Appeals (CA), the BI said yesterday.

Grifton Medina, BI acting port operations division chief, and traffic control and enforcement unit (TCEU) personnel Deon Carlo Albao, Danieve Binsol, Fidel Mendoza and Chevy Chase Naniong are no longer connected with the bureau, according to Dana Sandoval, BI spokesperson.

In 2021, the Office of the Ombudsman found Albao, Binsol, Mendoza and Naniong guilty of grave misconduct and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of government service.

The CA reduced to six months the sentence of Medina after finding him only guilty of neglect of duty for failing to act on the offenses of his subordinates.

“The bureau has complied with the decisions it previously received and will comply with this recent CA decision,” Sandoval said.

Sandoval said that aside from the ombudsman’s decision, the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2022 issued a separate order dismissing 18 officers and employees reportedly linked to the pastillas scheme.

Only the names of the four TCEU personnel mentioned in the CA’s decision were covered in the DOJ’s 2022 order.

The 2021 dismissal order of the ombudsman covered 45 BI officers and employees, including Medina.

The BI has implemented safeguards to prevent a repeat of the pastillas scheme like implementing a massive reorganization with checks and balances, Sandoval said.

It also acted immediately on reports of irregularities committed by its officers and personnel and is working toward automating the immigration processes.

The pastillas scheme was exposed in 2020 after authorities discovered that immigration officers were receiving bribes amounting to P10,000 to allow foreigners, mostly Chinese, to enter the country without going through the proper immigration process at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

It was called the pastillas bribery scheme because the bribe money was rolled in a white paper that resembled the local milk pastry called pastillas.