Bacolod mayor gets travel permit

IT’S A GO for Monico this time.

After being rebuffed twice, Bacolod City Mayor Monico Puentevella has been allowed by the Sandiganbayan to fly to Switzerland to represent the Philippines in an international football congress this month.

In a two-page resolution, the antigraft court’s Second Division granted Puentevella’s request to attend the Extraordinary Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) Congress from Feb. 24 to 29 in Zurich.

The court directed the mayor to file a manifestation containing copies of his authenticated travel documents within five days after his return to the country.

It did not require Puentevella to post a travel bond since he has yet to withdraw the P90,000 fee he paid when he went to Hong Kong to attend a friend’s wedding last month.

“Should he not return as undertaken and fail to present himself at the hearings of this case… he shall be deemed to have waived his presence and such waiver shall not preclude the court from forfeiting his bail and travel bonds,” read the court’s Feb. 23 resolution.

Puentevella, who is seeking reelection in the May elections, is out on bail following his indictment for graft over the purported irregularities in the purchase of P26 million worth of computers using his pork barrel allocations when he was still a Bacolod congressman from 2002 to 2007.

In May last year, the court threw out twice his request to attend the 65th Fifa congress in Zurich after his hospitalization, which momentarily delayed his arraignment.