Iloilo businessman ordered arrested
A noted local businessman was ordered arrested last week by an Iloilo court after he was charged with four counts of grave oral defamation by the Iloilo City Prosecutors Office.
Chiu Cembrano, owner of the Golden (Iloilo) Delta Sales Corporation in the downtown area, was indicted after the prosecutor found a prima facie case against him.
Judge Ofelia Artuz of the Iloilo City Municipal Trial Court in Cities Branch 5 ordered Cembrano’s arrest on July 21 and set his bail at P24,000, at P6,000 per count. Cembrano remains at large.
The case against Cembrano stemmed from criminal complaints filed last year against him by his niece Hazel Joan Cembrano, her friend Diona Fortin, customer Heide Sanz and employee Analie Aloro.
The complainants alleged that on November 3, 2008, Cembrano kicked a box Fortin was wrapping and shouted invectives at them, accusing them of blaspheming the image of the Santo Niño.
Cembrano also happens to be the president of the Sun Yat Sen Alumni Association, a prestigious Chinese-Filipino school in Iloilo City.
On that day, Fortin was only visiting her friend Hazel Joan who happens to be the Allowance Construction and Hardware Materials Purchasing and Payroll Officer of the Golden (Iloilo) Delta Sales Corporation, holding office at the mezzanine of the store at Ledesma Street.
Sanz, for her part, is a customer who happens to be at the store during that time doing errand for her employer. Aloro, on the other hand, is the secretary of the store’s vice president Chiu Han Sing Cembrano, brother of the respondent.
Based on the complaints, after Mr Cembrano had kicked the box Fortin was wrapping, he then accused Aloro of spreading her legs in front of the image of the Child Jesus and cursed Aloro and Hazel Joan. Soon after, he went down where he was heard shouting “What do you want? Are you a thief?”
It turned out that while leaving the mezzanine, he met Sanz who was on her way up. Sanz, in her affidavit, said what Mr Cembrano did greatly put her to shame and embarrassment because there were many people who had witnessed the incident.
Hazel Joan, for her part, now fears for her life because while she resides in the same building as her uncle who, she claimed “has plenty of guns and rifles.”
In his counter-affidavit, Cembrano attributed the charges imputed against him as an off-shoot of the bitter dissolution of the co-ownership and partition of properties involving him and his brother, Chiu Han Sing Cembrano, Hazel Joan’s father.
He also denied having uttered scurrilous words against the four women stating that on the date of the alleged incident, he and his wife were praying at the altar and that they merely called the attention of the complainants concerning the garbage scattering around.
Investigating Prosecutor Ferdinand Thomas Magallanes, in a resolution dated June 9, said there is sufficient ground to hold Cembrano liable to the crime of grave oral defamation, as he found Cembrano’s utterances to be “categorically abusive and malicious.”
“The mere statement of denial made by Respondent, without any evidence or sufficient testimony supporting such claim, cannot impress upon this investigation the veracity of his testimony to the exclusion of the adverse declaration of the Complainants,” Magallanes wrote.
Magallanes also described as “remotely relevant” to the case the conflict between Chiu Cembrano and his brother Chiu Han Sing Cembrano, which has led to the exchange of civil suits.
“It must be noted that herein Complainants are not participants nor are they privy to the civil actions mentioned by the Respondent. With the allegations in the complaints remained uncontroverted by any adverse proof, the finding of probable cause as to the commission of the given crime is in the affirmative,” the investigating prosecutor added.