MANILA: The Philippines’ police chief faced calls yesterday for his resignation after admitting he accepted gifts and favours worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he insisted they were not bribes.
Police Director-General Alan Purisima was also under intense scrutiny for assets seemingly far beyond his modest salary of P107,000 a month, including four houses, a condominium and a luxury four-wheel drive.
“This is part of the culture of corruption throughout our national institutions,” Dante Jimenez, head of Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, a citizen’s graft watchdog group, said.
Jimenez’s organisation is one of two groups to have formally called on the country’s ombudsman to file bribery and corruption charges against Purisima.
In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Purisima disclosed assets worth about $400,000, including the houses, five vehicles, a trucking business and a chicken farm.
Purisima said he also accepted an offer last year from a car dealer of a discount worth about $60,000 when he bought a luxury sport utility vehicle.
And he confirmed secret businessmen built for free an official residence worth P11m, dubbed the “White House,” inside the police headquarters, to serve as his official residence.
However Purisima insisted he had not done anything wrong, and the allegations of corruption were motivated by those who would be affected by his own anti-graft campaign.
However Teresita See, head of the local crime watchdog Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Democracy, said Purisima’s accepting of such lucrative offers meant his position was untenable. Afp
