With cops like these, who needs robbers?

At first nobody believed Nilo Almendral. He’s a gangster facing trial for frustrated and attempted murder, and robbery. How could anyone take his word about the involvement of high-ranking police officers in the very crimes he’s charged with, along with an unsolicited confession of kidnapping for ransom?

But Almendral not only swore by his story, he also gave lurid details about how his police bosses planned and ordered the crimes. He testified under oath about the kidnapping for which another set of suspects were arrested. Now Almendral the talk of the town in Naga City and Camarines Sur. Naga Mayor Jesse Robredo has written Justice Secretary Hernando Perez to investigate the implicated officers. Anticrime crusaders are requesting the NBI to put him in its protective custody lest he be silenced in his jail cell.

Almendral’s life of crime started in 1996 as an aide of a barangay captain who ran a jueteng operation. He moved on to bigger crimes when he was recruited into a gang led by policemen. The worse his offenses became, the higher were the officers who ordered it.

In a sworn narrative last April 22, Almendral said he first met Police Officer-3 Wilfredo Soriano when the latter picked him up in Dec. 1998 for involvement in the stabbing of a neighbor by the barangay captain’s son. Instead of hailing Almendral to the precinct, Soriano took him to a hideout and asked him to consider serving as a police informer. His job would be simple: to tell them about jueteng operations.

Almendral was thrilled not only with the immunity from arrest but also the big earnings that Soriano promised him. He returned the next day to the hideout, where Soriano introduced him to Sgt. Henriquito Canuel and fellow-informers Dante Brembuela, Ding Compuesto, Nelson Asoro, Gabriel Baconata and Jojo Barcelona. Spying on jueteng lords soon turned into collecting grease money from them.

A year-and-a-half later in June 2000 Police Officer Alejo Francisco, a friend of Soriano and Canuel, visited the hideout and tipped them off about a Paula San Lorenzo who was saving up cash to buy a truck. From jueteng, they graduated to robbery. Almendral narrated how four of them tailed San Lorenzo at a supermarket, then jumped into a tricycle that the woman hailed. Asoro and Barcelona squeezed themselves in with San Lorenzo and her child companion, Brembuela and Almendral rode behind the driver. They rode off to another town, divested the woman of her cash, then waited for policemen Canuel, Francisco and Soriano to pick them up in a jeepney. The loot was P25,000; each informer got a P2,000-share. An attempted murder and some small assignments followed that job. In early Aug. 2000 Canuel drove the five informers to the Provincial Special Organized Unit at the Camarines police headquarters to meet Maj. Rolando Montes. There, they planned to rob a certain Aping Olivan of Naga, whom Montes assured won’t complain to the police because he is himself involved in illicit activities.

Again Almendral narrated in detail how, on Aug. 8, 2000, between 9 and 10 a.m., they lied in ambush on the highway at Bagula in Pamplona town. Canuel was 20 meters away from them; Montes was in a car tailing Olivan. Everything worked with clockwork precision: Montes overtook the car at a designated area, Canuel waved his hat, the five informers blocked Olivan’s car. They grabbed a bag from Olivan’s wife and ran to the bushes. Montes, Soriano and Canuel met them at provincial headquarters at dusk. Montes hustled the informers one by one into the office of Col. Almario Hilario, who wasn’t happy with the loot, a mere P890,000. Almendral was given P60,000 for his work.

A murder followed. They killed one Dionisio Bristol, whom the cop-bosses said had learned too much about the Olivan job. Other small jobs followed, including their robbery, on orders of Canuel and Insp. Hansel Marantan, of an old couple who ran a corner store in Bato town.

In Dec. 2000 Montes called the gang to his house in Malinao, Albay. He detailed to them a plan of Colonel Hilario to kidnap businessman Max Cosay. "Tail a green Toyota Corolla with plate number WCY 716," he told them, "intercept it on the Pili-Naga Road, drive it to Sipocot, transfer Cosay to a white Tamaraw FX, and proceed to the house of Dante Villalobos in Haradiong, Sariaya, Quezon."

Everything worked as planned on the afternoon of Jan. 30, 2001. Almendral waited at a bus stop in Cadian, Pili, Camarines Sur. Cosay’s green car whizzed by, followed by the group’s white "striker" car with plate number WEJ 867. Almendral drove after them in Montes’s motorcycle. At the Marapong Bridge, the striker vehicle overtook Cosay’s car and forced it to the shoulder. Barcelona, Brembuela, Bacunata and Asoro jumped out and, at gunpoint, ordered Cosay and his driver to the rear seat. Almendral served as lookout nearby at the bus stop outside St. Paul Subd. From there, he could see both the kidnapping and the road leading to the subdivision where Officers Montes, Caneul and Soriano were monitoring the operation 15 meters away. They got Cosay’s two daughters.

Two days later Brembuela relayed to them an order given through a new recruit, Ding Compuesto, and a Senior Police Officer-1 Sto. Domingo. They were to rob Naga’s Mother Seton Hospital to divert public attention from the kidnapping, which had become hot news. Another easy job, for which Almendral got P30,000.

On Feb. 3, 2001, Montes instructed Almendral to present himself to the Cosay family as a concerned citizen who ostensibly wants to help, but actually to mislead investigating policemen with false information. On Feb. 21 Almendral drives to Calauag, Quezon, with Montes, Canuel and Soriano for the ransom dropoff. They waited until past midnight at the highway near a gas station. A maroon car stopped and a passenger handed them a black bag. On the drive back to Camarines, Montes called someone on the cellphone with instructions to release the Cosays and take the victims to Alabang, Muntinlupa since P40 million had been paid. Montes then chuckled that the total ransom was P75 million because of a P1-million "interest" for each day of delay in the payoff. But back at police headquarters on the night of Feb. 24, Montes grumbled to Almendral that the Cosays had paid a measly P4.86 million. Thus, the informer’s share was only P180,000.

Still more robberies followed, including one in Quezon City in which they set up a new recruit to be shot by responding policemen. They left the body behind, knowing that the identity of the recruit would throw off investigators away from their Camarines base of operations. Canuel also had his own cousin, with whom he had a fight, robbed in Naga. Almendral left the gang when he overheard a plan of the cop-bosses to kill them because of what they knew about the kidnapping. He fled to Masbate with his former boss, the barangay captain, who was supposed to execute them but would himself be executed afterwards. The gang leaders tracked them down, and shot the jueteng lord in broad daylight. Almendral returned to the Naga hideout, where Canuel assured him that he was not on the hit list.

The bosses gave Almendral one last mission, after which he had their permission to start a new life: He was to penetrate a robbery gang that competed with their operations, convince the head to join up with them, and rob a general mechandising store. The leader was an impatient and impulsive man, who decided to rob instead the adjoining cellular phone company. It was all botched up. The cop-bosses decided to throw them all in jail. But Hilario suddenly offered to bail out Almendral and give him P500,000 to start a new life. He knew it was a setup. He decided to sing.

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President Gloria Arroyo practically trashed the controversial Jancom garbage contract when she said she won’t sign it because it’s flawed. Yet its opponents continue to rant and rave about it. And they concentrate their fire on Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio for allegedly pushing the deal when he actually had inhibited himself from deliberations about its legality. This has led members of the bench and bar to suspect if somebody associated with a Jancom competitor is behind the snow job on Carpio.

That somebody, a justice says, is a government appointee who failed to grab the Pasay City reclamation site on which the CCP Complex stands. During his stint as President Ramos’s chief legal counsel, Carpio consistently had rejected an out-of-court settlement from which the appointee would have made billions of pesos. Carpio instead advised his boss to await Court of Appeals and Supreme Court decisions, which subsequently went against the appointee and vindicated Carpio’s position.

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