(Eagle News) — Retired police official Wally Sombero filed a graft complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman against two deputy commissioners of the Bureau of Immigration for allegedly extorting money from Chinese gambling tycoon Jack Lam.
Sombero filed the graft complaint against immigration commissioners Al Argosino and Michael Robles for bad faith, manifest partiality and gross inexcusable negligence for causing undue injury to government, punishable under Section 3(e) of the Ant-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
Sombero, who is accused of serving as a middleman for Lam, said that he considered a long time the filing of complaint against the two commissioners after they extorted money from Lam. He said that he even consulted Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II on this.
He claimed that dismissed Immigration intelligence chief Charles Calima would serve as a witness in the complaint.
In an interview with reporters, Sombero, who retired early on from the police service, claimed that it was Immigration commissioner Argosino who initially demanded P150 million from him.
He said that this happened after their meeting with Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre and Lam on November 25, which was also attended by Argosino.
The meeting was supposedly to explain then to Aguirre about online gaming and why this could benefit the country.
Sombero said he knew about the online gaming operations since he started the Asian Gaming Service Provider Association when he retired at age 44.
He said that he was very surprised when Argosino secretly asked him P150 million.
“I did not expect that because the reason why Jack Lam and Secretary Aguirre agreed with that meeting, (it was) very clear (that there would be) no financial consideration,” Sombero said.
“When they demanded more, 50 million plus 50 million, I was shocked again… Kaya nireport ko kay Gen. Calima and then we planned for an entrapment operation that November 30,” Sombero said.
The two immigration commissioners, however, claimed that it was Lam’s men who had tried to bribe them, giving them P50 million.
Argosino and Robles said they got the money as they will present this as evidence against Lam.
They claimed that Sombero asked for P2 million, and that the P18 million went to Calima.
Sombero, however, claimed on Friday that Argosino gave him the P2 million to form a legal team that would help the arrested Chinese nationals working for Lam.
Earlier, Justice Secretary Aguirre said he has already recommended to President Duterte the immediate dismissal of Robles and Argosino, saying that he felt “betrayed” by his fraternity brothers.
