Fugitive Senator did a ‘Jason Bourne’ for a year; used fake travel doc, says DFA

Senator Panfilo Lacson tells reporters that he had not used his pork barrel for more than 11 years. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Travel Document No. 34258, which Sen. Panfilo Lacson supposedly used when he returned to the country after a year on the lam, was “fake” and “manufactured,” an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday.

Felipe Cariño, executive director of the DFA’s Office of Consular Affairs, told reporters that the real copy of the one-way travel document presented by Lacson when he arrived on March 26 at the Mactan International Airport in Cebu City was still with the agency.

The authentic document bearing the same number as Lacson’s travel document was never released by the Office of Consular Affairs Office, Cariño said.

The illegal document used by Lacson was “fake and manufactured as the number corresponding to that is still intact,” Cariño said.

Citing the senator’s case, Cariño also revealed that “efforts are currently being undertaken (by the DFA) to get to the bottom of the (travel document) inventory” controversy.

“There should be an enhancement on the security features not only because of this case, but as part of the overall solution,” he said.

According to Cariño, there are two types of travel documents—a sheet of paper for one-way direct travel and a manually-scripted passport-like booklet for emergency transit.

However, both travel documents have none of the security features currently used in the existing e-passports issued by DFA.

Only about 20 travel documents are released daily by Philippine consular posts abroad, most of which are used for emergency purposes, Cariño added.

Sometime in April, the DFA disclosed that Travel Document No. 34258 was “still with the Department of Foreign Affairs and has not yet been sent out” to any Philippine embassy or consulate abroad.

Foreign Undersecretary for Administration Rafael E. Seguis made the disclosure in a March 31 letter to Justice Secretary Leila B. De Lima.

Seguis named the DFA’s property division as the source of the information.