| Faustino Chingkoe |
Businessman Faustino Chingkoe and his wife Gloria Eng Eng Chingkoe, wanted by Manila for a multi-billion peso tax scam are in Richmond, B.C., where they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying up real estate.
Manila, which is in a financial crisis, recently announced a new direction in the prosecution of multibillion-peso tax-credit scam cases and has transferred all investigations and files, including the Chingkoe case to the Office of the Special Prosecutor.
The cases were previously handled by the Special Presidential Task Force 156 which had been criticized for failing to land a single conviction in the criminal cases, and not being able to collect for the government on any of the dozens of civil cases filed in various courts.
"We will concentrate on all of these cases," Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa Ignacio said, adding that there is no reason why his office could not effectively prosecute the cases and run after their perpetrators.
He told media in Manila that the amount involved in the cases could have helped plug the fiscal crisis had they been collected properly or the civil-recovery cases had been pursued more earnestly.
Villa Ignacio said inheriting the duties and functions of the former task force could also mean a better handling of the evidence and the witnesses.
The task force had earlier been criticized for the "burning" of witnesses--by the filing of questionable cases against them--even though they had helped the government build up its case and testified for the State before the courts.
The special prosecutor said his first order of the day is to conduct an inventory of all the papers and the cases that are with the task.
Among the records that he will look into first is the listing of the assets and properties of the country's "suspected biggest tax-scam perpetrator", the couple Faustino and Gloria Chingkoe.
An investigation by The Asian Pacific Post in July 2003 showed that the Chingkoes were residing at Tolmie St. in Richmond in a house worth over C$500,000.
The couple had also invested in several other properties on Westminster Highway and on Alderbridge Way in Richmond, according to property records.
They are alleged to have defrauded the Philippines government of some 5.3 billion pesos in tax revenues by issuing fake tax credit certificates. Some believe the amount may have reached 20 billion pesos (C$520 million).
Philippines has not been very successful in extraditing fugitives from Canada.
The most recent case involves alleged political assassin Rodolfo Pacificador wanted for a 1986 political murder that triggered the Filipino People Power revolution. After a lengthy court battle, Canada's Supreme Court agreed that the Philippines judicial system could not be trusted to give Pacificador a fair trial.
Another high profile case involved former Marcos crony Dewey Go Dee. Dee, 63, has been living with his wife and four children in Richmond since 1982 while successfully fighting the government's repeated attempts to have him deported. He managed a trading company owned by his wife.
