The Real Story Behind My Illegal “Arrest” and Detention in Manila, Philippines By: Garwood M. Weatherhead In May 2012, my business partner and I were arrested in Manila under fictitious charges. We were detained just before we were about to make an informational investment presentation to expats at a local hotel. I knew many of the invited expats as former co-workers from a bank I had worked at in Manila back in the 90s. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), an ultra-corrupt police organization in the Philippines, was hired by a local financial firmto arrest us, because they could not compete with the investment returns our fund was producing and they wanted to crush their competition. This is a common practice in the Philippines, where foreign businessmen are often arrested and detained on trumped-up charges by the police or NBI, who are hired by local firms that don’t want competition. Once in custody, the foreigners are typically threatened with long prison terms without any hope for release unless they agree to pay large extortion fees. I’m writing this piece because we were among the many unfortunate foreigners who were preyed on by the NBI, and I want readers to know that I was a victim, and not a criminal like the government publications and news articles written by the NBI, and later posted on Google have suggested. Briefly, here’s my story. In May 2012, my business partner and I were arrested by the infamous NBI before we even had a chance to give a presentation.Only two of my ex-colleagues showed up for the presentation, and we were just chatting with them when the conference room was stormed by NBI undercover officers and a few of their SEC lackeys.After identifying themselves and telling us we were going to be detained for questioning, they hustled us into a service elevator and then pushed us into the back of a van, which took us to NBI headquarters. Once there, we were told we were under arrest for “offering securities to potential investors without the proper SEC permits.” Of course, the charges were a complete joke. Not only were we not offering any securities to anyone, we hadn’t even had a chance to give our presentation. Of course, the NBI officers had a solution to our grave situation. We could avoid a swift kangaroo court hearing where we would be sentenced for up to 26 years in prison if we would only agree to pay their extortion demand of $30,000. We were shocked by how bold their expectations of illegal monetary gains were…like it was just part of their everyday routine. In a last ditch effort to avoid their extortion demands,we demanded to meet with our embassy representatives(mine was a US Embassy representative). Unfortunately, they weren’t very helpful. They sympathized with our situation, but told us that they could not interfere with the local justice system, no matter how unjust and corrupt it was.The Embassy did give me a list of lawyers I could contact, but they were all locals who work every day in the broken justice
system there, so how could I trust any of them? The NBI knows that the embassies are impotent in these situations and the NBI also has many judges and lawyers in their pocket, which is why they can afford to be so bold with their extortion demands. There are presently hundreds of foreigners rotting in Philippine prisons because they either refused or didn’t have the means to pay off their captors, and many are completely innocent or have committed only petty crimes. Anyway, we really had no choice. If we ever wanted to see the light of day again, we knew we had to meet the NBI’s demands. We told them we would do our best to raise the funds, so they left us in a detention room with our cell phones, under guard, so we could call all our contacts and try to raise the needed funds for our release. After two days we had raised about $20,000, and although the NBI thugs wanted more, they were anxious to tie up the deal. We agreed to have $10,000 placed in my offshore checking account, so they could make multiple withdrawals from it using my ATM card while we were still in custody, and we also agreed to wire another $10,000 via Western Union to a friend of an NBI officer living in the outskirts of Manila. After being held at the NBI detainment facility for another four days, so they could secure possession of our funds, we were finally released. The last thing an NBI officer told us before we were released was, “Don’t ever come back to the Philippines for business.” After arrivingsafely in Hong Kong, I was really fuming after going through our costly ordeal. I immediately contacted the US Embassy and other anti-corruption organizations in the Philippines (including the Office of the President and the Director of the NBI), and told them our story. I also sent them the names of the NBI officers involved, as well as all of the back-up documents proving that $20,000 had been extorted from us. I wanted our money back, the corrupt officials punished and an apology from the NBI! None of my complaints were ever addressed by the Philippine authorities I wrote to. In addition, none of the NBI officers involved in extorting money from us were ever punished, and neither were the people who hired the NBI to arrest us. Instead, in responseto my complaint, and as a face-saving measure, the NBI made sure that our “arrest” was published in all the Manila newspapers in order to ruin our reputations. Of course, these days, all newspaper articles and government publications are picked up by Google, and now everytime anyone Googles my name, these untrue articles appear, which paint me as a criminal. So, I took the time to write this piece so that readers will know the true story. The fact is that we were never arraigned, taken to trial or convicted of anything!! So for those business contacts, potential employers and others who read the NBI’s lies after Googling my name, please understand that I’m 100% innocent of their charges, and was never convicted of
anything! For confirmation of this, please feel free to contact the Pasig, Manila (Philippines) Courthouse to get full details about the case. Lastly, so readers can know how criminal, corrupt and dysfunctional the NBI is from the top management downwards, I wanted to mention that in 2013, about a year after we left the Philippines, the Director of the NBI (the same guy who was named inNBI publications and in the Philippine news articles, which wrongly charged us with “offering securities to investors without the proper permits.”) resigned his post after the NBI was embroiled in another of many controversies. This one involved a 10-billion peso pork barrel scam where two ranking NBI officials under the Director tipped off the defendant, a businesswoman, about an impending arrest warrant against her in connection with the serious illegal detention case filed by the pork barrel scam whistleblower. The businesswoman's lawyer also claimed that some NBI officials tried to extort P300 million from her client in exchange for the dropping of the illegal detention case. The NBI’s long-documented criminal reputation certainly doesn’t stop there. The previous Director of the NBI was removed from office in 2011 in connection with cases of extortion and the abduction of a Japanese woman in Manila.