Then-president Rodrigo Duterte’s 2019 appointment of favored cop Royina Garma as Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) general manager cemented a key flank in the takeover of crime cartels.
This underworld capture, for decades contained in Duterte’s home city of Davao, surged nationwide after 2016 as he hammered the country’s democratic institutions from all sides.
Garma and Edilberto Leonardo, another retired pet cop, have been implicated in the 2016 murder of three Chinese nationals in the Davao penal colony. Now, senior police officers link both to other crimes, including murder in the PCSO, and possible money laundering.
It’s a mosaic of gore and plunder. Duterte’s loyal lieutenants marched into key posts as a crime hydra, stretched its tentacles to snarf down new territories, helped along by a bloodbath extending from slum alleys to mountain hamlets.
Executive branch officials and lawmakers — many of them former Duterte enablers — would have us believe that crime flourished because of weak laws.
The big picture shows a different truth: Duterte’s best and brightest officers were criminals and many others, fools who followed orders blindly. Law enforcers committed monstrous deeds under the cover of governance, aided by a bureaucracy that ignored laws for the benefit of Duterte and his bedfellows.
In short, a whole-of-nation approach in the service of crime.
Let’s break it down.
Conspiracy to murder
Police Lieutenant Colonel Santie Mendoza confessed to planning the murder of PCSO board secretary Wesley Barayuga on orders of Leonardo, with operational intelligence from Police Sergeant Enecito Ubales Jr., a first cousin who served in Garma’s security detail.
Mendoza’s affidavit shows direct lines of communications with Leonardo and Garma’s security aide. It also shows how Duterte’s drug list was used to perpetrate and whitewash a crime.
He describes in detail the levels of premeditation: the assignment of a vehicle for Barayuga when the latter’s use of public transportation made for difficult casing; last-minute tasks to give the hit team time to get into position; and, most chilling of all, the order to take him within the borders of Mandaluyong City, where Colonel Hector Grijaldo, Garma’s classmate at the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA), headed the police force.
Why did he do it? Because he was told Barayuga was on Duterte’s drug list, a refrain heard over and over in a year of hearings.
The killing of a general normally sparks a massive hunt for the perpetrators. Grijaldo left a vague report, glossing over the small town lottery (STL) mess Barayuga was investigating, and instead highlighting, with no corroborating details, the victim’s supposed involvement in drugs. Then National Capital Region police director and later national police chief Debold Sinas, Garma’s Region VII boss, had also pushed that theory.
Alive, Barayuga did not figure in any drug list. His name, PDEA officials say, appeared after the murder.
Brazen machinations
Former PCSO chairperson Anselmo Simeon Pinili told House probers that the most probable motive for the murder was Barayuga’s refusal to issue certificates for new STL franchises without approval by all board directors.
That is damning. Garma had shut down STLs for months, ostensibly to review corrupt deals. She placed Ubales’ wife, Emily, at the helm of the STL core group that greenlighted existing franchises and applicants.
Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Barando, who served under Garma when she headed the Cebu City police force, was also in that tight circle. His wife was among the top nominees for the STL Partylist – Samahan ng Totoong Larong May Puso. Garma created the group and funneled at least P2 million to boost their 2022 campaign — a clear conflict of interest.
Had the party-list organization won, it would have pushed to expand PCSO holdings to include then-illegal number games.
Garma, Duterte’s hound dog, did not lift a finger to investigate murder in her house.
Pinili, a retired officer and Barayuga’s “mistah” in the Philippine Military Academy Class (PMA) of ‘83, chose to bring his concerns to then special assistant to the president and now senator Bong Go, and then fell back into silence.
Then-interior secretary and now National Security Adviser Eduardo Año, also from the same PMA class, had refuted Sinas’ claim, but otherwise did nothing.
Hydra trail to legitimacy
Duterte and Sinas stomped on protocol by foisting Garma on Cebu City, despite opposition from then-mayor Tommy Osmena.
Explaining his stand, the former local executive presented lawmakers with a 2018 report indicating Garma received P1 million weekly in illegal gaming payola as head of the Davao PNP investigation and detection group.
Osmeña personally informed Duterte of the information. The reply: talk to Bong Go.
Go facilitated Garma’s application for the PCSO post. He was also responsible for her breezing in and out of Malacañang meetings with Duterte.
In the PCSO, and in the Philippine online gaming operators (POGO) industry harboring other crime groups, the hydra trail is clear: drug monies underwrote the takeover of illegal gambling networks and, in the case of POGOs, exploited tech and business infrastructure for global fraud and money-laundering; law enforcement agencies acted as enforcers and protectors.
The executive branch paved the way for legitimacy via policy and Duterte’s orders.
The PCSO gave the government a deep well that lawmakers believe funded the PNP reward system for kills. The Commission on Audit has flagged the lack of reporting on the actual use of around P600 million in PNP charity funds.
Another sinister side of the executive branch surfaced during the September 27 quad comm hearing at the House of Representatives, featuring Garma’s former husband, Colonel Roland Vilela.
The couple’s marriage was annulled after he was linked twice to sexual abuse of women under his custody. That did not stop Vilela’s climb. He was appointed police attaché to the West Coast, where he bought into a branch of a popular restaurant.
As lawmakers questioned the source of his funds, the use of the police diplomatic pouch for personal use emerged. So did revelations that Vilela and Garma continued to work together.
Police Captain Delfinito Anuba admitted he changed pesos to dollars for the duo, with orders coming from Vilela via Viber calls.
He got pesos for conversion from Ubelas “at the PCSO,” and then gave these back as US dollars. There was one bag with P30 million, another with P20 million, plus several other exchanges in smaller amounts.
Anuba also converted a P500,000 packet sent through an emissary of Vilela’s current wife and delivered this to the police budget office in charge of sending funds to the US.
Año was DILG secretary then, in charge of the PNP. Lawmakers should summon him, too, as they unravel the outbound path of millions from the PCSO.
Duterte justified his bloodlust as a way of “saving” the country from turning into a narco state. We have since learned that his beloved cops and aides actually turned the Philippines into just that, adding illegal gambling and fraud into its superstructure. – Rappler.com