Business as usual for gambling mob

By NITZ ARANCON
with LITO RULONA
Correspondents

ILLEGAL gambling operations in the city and the province have have gone full blast as soon as authorities went soft, looked the other way, and reneged on a promise to break up the mob and rid this part of the country of gangsters behind the organized criminal activities.

In September, city police director Senior Supt. Ronnie Francis Cariaga promised the city council that he would step down from the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (Cocpo) if the local police failed to put a stop to the illegal gambling operations. Cariaga’s self-imposed two-month deadline already lapsed–but he is still the city’s police chief.

Almost at the same time, police director for northern Mindanao Chief Supt. Noel Constantino ordered a “war on illegal gambling” in the city and across the region, a campaign that organized lotto agents now see as “ningas kugon” (enthusiastically starting things but then quickly losing enthusiasm) if not, mere lip service.

The Misamis Oriental-Cagayan de Oro Lotto Outlet Agents Association Inc. is very unhappy. The group has confirmed that illegal gambling operations, specifically the illegal version of the numbers game “Suertres,” have resumed in Cagayan de Oro and Misamis Oriental.

Astrid Jose Bana, a former president of the association, said the police crackdown on illegal gambling here following the start of the Duterte administration, was shortlived, and the revenues of lotto agents accredited by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) have plunged again by over 50 percent.

The illegal Suertres operations in the city and the province have gone “full swing” under the noses of officials who are in the position to stop the illegal activities if they really wanted to, said Bana.

The reason for the police’s seesaw attitude in the fight against illegal gambling is anyone’s guess but PCSO-accredited lotto agents say it is not unthinkable that money has long been changing hands, and that the shortlived anti-illegal gambling campaign was nothing more than a brief mob recess at a time when the public was taking notice of the inaction of authorities.

In 2012, the city council started an inquiry into the unabated illegal gambling operations in the city in response to reports published by the Gold Star Daily then about the alleged police protection that a loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of the organized criminal activities then were enjoying.

That year, the inquiry and subsequent calls for a lifestyle check on police officials were sparked by pronouncements made by retired Chief Supt. Conrado Laza, a former police director for northern Mindanao, that the reason why illegal gambling operations here continued was because protection money was trickling from Camp Alagar down to the police precincts.

Laza also alleged that some Camp Alagar officials then were even serving as “bagmen” and “collectors” of the protection money from illegal gambling operators.

In September 2012, criminologist Roger Abaday, then a city councilor, corroborated Laza’s allegations by delivering a special report in the city council to expose the alleged protection money.

Bana said his group has identified over 20 “persons of interest” suspected to be behind the illegal gambling operations, and all the suspects have continued to enjoy impunity to this day.

Bana declined to name the suspects but he said a list has been submitted by his group to the PCSO.

“Mibalik ang operation sa illegal Suertes kay mi-undang na usab ang kapolisan sa ilang operation against illegal gambling,” he said.

During the period of the shortlived police crackdown on illegal gambling operations, Bana said, the PSCO-authorized lotto agents earned an average P15 thousand to P20 thousand a day each. Now, it’s back to P2 thousand a day or even much less.

Given this, he said, his group sent a proposal to PCSO to allow the authorized lotto agents to sell Suertres tickets by as low as a peso. That, he said, would give PCSO-accredited agents a fighting chance against the illegal gambling operators.

“Alkansi man kami kay ang mga illegal operator sa Suertres modawat man sa piso. Ma-o nang nag-propose kami sa PCSO-Manila nga modawat pud kami ug piso imbis P10 per three-number combination,” Bana said.

Mayor Oscar Moreno has created the Task Force on Illegal Gambling, and its members met with the Misamis Oriental-Cagayan de Oro Lotto Agents Association that is now headed by Roque Marban, a retired police official, on Tuesday afternoon.

Moreno created the task force in November to help in the enforcement of RA 9287, a law that increases penalties against those behind illegal numbers games. A similar task force was created by Misamis Oriental Gov. Yevgeny Vincente Emano for the province in October.

Councilor Romeo Calizo, vice chairman of the Task Force, said the group would need to carry out another round of synchronized raids on illegal lotto outlets here.

Marban and Benjamin Rada, another retired police officer who is serving as information officer of the group, said illegal gambling operations are now subjects of surveillance by their group.

Rada said the group has also asked city police director Cariaga to assign new police officers to the task force.

“We prefer to have new officers,” Rada said.

Calizo said the task force would closely work with Cocpo.

“With that set-up, the effort against the illegal gambling activities in the city will get stronger,” he said.