President Rodrigo Duterte’s order to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and other law enforcement agencies to close down any operations of illegal investment schemes did not come as a surprise. A lawyer and former prosecutor, the President knows a fraud when he sees one.
On Saturday, the President finally ended all speculations on his stand on the controversial investment schemes sweeping the region. Prior to that, there had been some posts in social media claiming President Duterte is okay with Kapa, Rigen and all others of the same business. There were even some people who posted a photo of PRRD on the logoface of Kapa.
In the interview which was coincidentally made in the television program of evangelist Apollo Quiboloy, Duterte said the NBI should immediately put a stop to these schemes. The President said he has been telling people that “when it is too good to be true, it is fraud.” Duterte said he is bound to force the stand of the government because these investment schemes “are into syndicated estafa.”
However, because the announcement was made in the Quiboloy television program, people gave color to the order and blamed the evangelist for ‘insinuating’ the closure against Kapa, which is another religious congregation, although not as big as Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
We do not want to see this as a religious row. It is simply a legal order to close what is not legal. People who advocate the scheme cannot justify what is illegal as legal based on their own interpretations. The binding interpretation is that which is founded on existing laws and it has preceded the President’s order when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a cease and desist order on Kapa, revoked its permit and issued advisory against others similarly situated like Rigen.
Nevertheless, President Duterte’s order will be an empty one if the law enforcers in this region will have to act like lame ducks again even when the President has already spoken.
