MANILA, Philippines -- A senior police official accused of escorting Jason Ivler out of the country after he was involved in a fatal car crash in 2004, vowed to help locate the suspected killer of a Palace official’s son, the Philippine National Police said Monday.

Chief Supt. Leonardo Espina, PNP spokesman, said Senior Supt. Antonio Gumiran promised to facilitate the surrender of Ivler, who was charged on Monday for the killing of Renato Ebarle Jr. during a traffic altercation.

Espina said Gumiran also denied allegations that he had tried to help Ivler slip out of the country in 2004, after the court ordered his arrest following the smash-up that led to the death of then presidential adviser on resettlement Nestor Ponce Jr. five years ago.

Espina said he had a “one-on-one interview” with Gumiran over the weekend after his role in Ivler’s failed escape try in 2004 came out in the media.

During the meeting, Espina said the police official admitted that Ivler was his second-degree cousin.

“It should be made clear that Gumiran did not know that there is a warrant (for Ivler’s arrest in 2004). He was just there to see to it that he was safe. He was not escorting,” Espina told reporters in Camp Crame, Quezon City.

Police records showed that Ivler was accosted by immigration agents aboard a passenger ship bound for Sandakan, Malaysia from Zamboanga City a few days after the accident that killed Ponce.

Gumiran and Senior Inspector Jeffery Briones Uy, who were then with the suspect on the ship, supposedly tried to intervene and offered a $5,000 bribe to the immigration officials to let Ivler go.

Espina, however, said Gumiran vehemently brushed off the allegations, stressing that the police officer only acted as a “concerned relative.”

Espina said both Gumiran and Uy were administratively charged for conduct unbecoming of police officials, but were subsequently cleared for “failure to prosecute.”

He said the three immigration agents who accosted Ivler did not attend the summary hearings against the two policemen.

Meanwhile, Senior Supt. Mario Yanga, former Zamboanga City Police chief and now chief of the Regional Mobile Group in Western Mindanao, also reported that Ivler, 27, was arrested in 2004 on board MV Mary Joy, a passenger boat plying the Zamboanga-Malaysia route.

“What I know is that he was then trying to leave the country using the backdoor when he was arrested,” Yanga told the Inquirer by phone.

But Yanga said the operation then was conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation and Bureau of Immigration and Deportation.

“I learned about the operation [then] only hours after Ivler was arrested and he was immediately brought to Manila. He was turned over to the Manila court. There was no coordination done then, but we were informed after the guy was arrested and the one who informed me was one of the arresting personnel from the BID,” Yanga said.