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Bacolod City, Philippines Saturday, March 10, 2012
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Kidnapping original plan
of P3.6M heist gang: NBI

BY CARLA GOMEZ

The National Bureau of Investigation is validating intelligence reports that the Kuratong Baleleng-Parohinog gang members that staged the P3.6 million heist at the Central Negros Electric Cooperative in Bacolod City last week originally planned to stage a kidnap-for-ransom operation in Negros Occidental.

NBI Bacolod chief Ferdinand Lavin also said yesterday that the gang members believed to be Ozamis-based originally had two targets for kidnap- for-ransom but may have found it difficult to carry out their plan, and shifted to a soft target, which was CENECO, Lavin said.

He said the NBI is working closely with the Bacolod police in order to track down the gang members and their local contacts.

We are not discounting the possibility that they had an informant inside CENECO because of the precision in which they carried out the heist, Lavin said.

It would be very hard to stage that in under five minutes if one did not know what time the vault would be opened, and how much would be in it, Lavin said.

The NBI released yesterday a Barangay Tangub, Bacolod City resident, initially suspected to be the local contact of the robbers, after confirming that he was not involved, Lavin said.

The tip from an NBI informant turned out to be negative, he said.

About 20 fully armed NBI and police operatives on board four vehicles went to the house of Rommel Gonzales and he voluntarily came to the NBI office with his son after they invited him to go with them, Lavin said.

Gonzales’ profile fitted the description provided by the NBI informant but proper identification showed that he was not the one they were looking for, he added.

Rommel Gonzales, meanwhile, said the way the NBI-police team entered his residence was an over-kill. “They were not in uniform, and did not identify themselves right away, they had guns drawn and told me to get on the ground, as my 3-year-old son cried,” he said.

“They entered the house without a search warrant, they only had a warrant of arrest,” he added.

Some of his neighbors also complained that the law enforcers also pointed guns at them, he added.

Gonzales said he agreed to go with team to the NBI office because he saw Superintendent Santiago Rapiz, whom he knows, and knew that he would be safe, so he could clear his name.

He later learned that the name of the person the NBI team was looking for is Ramil Gonzales.

Rommel Gonzales said he signed a waiver that he would not press charges against the law enforcers as he does not want to go through the trouble of pursuing a case against them, although his brother who is a lawyer, told him that he should have lodged a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights.

Lavin said they went to the house of Gonzales prepared because their informant said that if there were more than three persons in the house, they could be met by resistance.

“It was not an overkill operation, how would the public react if we did not take precautions and someone got killed?” he said.

“We cannot let out guard down, we have to be ready,” Lavin said.

Yesterday Lavin also called on the public to report any information that could lead to the arrest of those involved in the Ceneco heist to the police of the NBI.

He said they believe the gang that staged the heist is from Ozamis because they have information that one of their getaway vehicles was transported back to Mindanao through the Dumaguete port.*CPG

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