Elements of the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) based in Bacolod were used by Ginette Dumancas, Leo Rey’s and Olivia Yanson’s lawyers to serve a warrant for the arrest of the Y4 (Roy, Emily, Ricardo, Yanson and Ma. Lourdes Celina Lopez) to harass them over the weekend to ensure they had no recourse for posting bail as courts are closed and immediate release orders are unavailing.
At the hearing on the Y4’s Motion to Suspend the Proceedings and Hold In Abeyance the Issuance of Warrant last Friday (May 29, 2020), not even the Judge mentioned about the implementation of any Warrant as it was put on hold last March and not implemented considering that said Motion was timely filed by the lawyers of the Y4 and had yet to be resolved with finality. The Judge also did not inform the defense counsel at the hearing last Friday of any warrant of arrest that it may have previously issued or will cause to implement over the weekend. As of date, neither the accused nor their lawyers have received any notice from the court that a warrant of arrest had already been issued.
Lawyers for the Y4 expressed their concern that certain individuals are attempting to misuse the court system through the misrepresentation of the warrant’s “unofficial” release and implementation, as the Y4 remain entitled to remedies available to them under the law. The Y4 know their rights under the Constitution and law as accused in a sham criminal suit filed against them as members of the Board of Directors of VTI, they stand firm in their belief that the charges are trumped-up, and they still have remedies for the revocation of the warrant, or even posting bail.
It also is strange how news and copies of the purported warrant of arrest that was not released by the court nor had been brought to the attention of their counsel, had been circulated among members of the Bacolod media as early as Friday, May 29, or two days before its dubious implementation on a Sunday morning when courts are closed, and why those warrants dated March 10, 2020 was never implemented even before ECQ was imposed in Bacolod on March 17, 2020. Was the CIDG not working during ECQ, or was it because they never knew and were never in receipt of those “warrants” until the lawyers of the Y2 were disallowed from appearing as counsel for complainant at last Friday’s hearing?
Why did the lawyer who was disallowed by the court to participate at Friday’s hearing for lack of any authority to intervene made statements to the media prophesizing that the March 10 warrant will be served soon, when he and the 3 other lawyers who appeared with him at the Friday hearing were excluded from the proceedings for lack of authority as confirmed by the public prosecutors who attended the Friday hearing?
What is mystifying is the suspicious circumstances upon which this unissued warrant found its way for “service” to the CIDG, its being “served” on the Y4 on a Sunday morning, and the lawyers representing the other side of the intra-corporate dispute among the Y4 and their other family members knowledge about its non-issuance since March 10, 2020 with the warrants suddenly finding its way to the offices not of the Bacolod Police but of the CIDG whose officers responsible for the violent takeover by the Y2 of VTI’s Mansilingan offices in August 2019 had been sued before the Ombudsman and Regional Trial Court in its aftermath.
The Y4 wait for more dirty tactics being employed on them by the Y2. This assumes they and their crew will not be embarrassed, no different from the CIDG’s empty service of the warrant this morning.
Reference: Atty. Carlo Joaquin Narvasa
Bacolod City, May 31, 2020
