Arrested beauty queen, boyfriend face more raps for faking document

CEBU CITY –– The Cebuana beauty queen and her Spanish boyfriend, who were arrested for swimming on a beach amid quarantine restrictions, are facing additional charges for allegedly falsifying a document to pass through multiple checkpoints in Cebu.

Police Colonel Roderick Mariano, chief of the Cebu Provincial Police Office, said they found out that Maria Gigante, 26, and boyfriend, Javier Filosa Castro, 35, did not have an authority from the Public Safety Alliance for Transformation and Rule of Law (PATROL) party-list to distribute relief goods in the southern part of Cebu.

“Investigators called the party-list group to verify the couple’s claim. It was found out that the group had not issued any authorization letter to them,” Mariano said in an interview.

Gigante, 26, and Castro, 35, were able to make it past the border control checkpoints after showing a letter of authorization supposedly signed by the PATROL party-list.

While the certification only bore Castro’s name, the police allowed the two to travel.

The two lovers were arrested last May 10 for swimming and drinking on the beach in Moalboal town, southwest Cebu, violating the quarantine restrictions imposed by the government as a precautionary measure against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

They allegedly did not heed the police directive to go straight to their destination and instead violated the enhanced community quarantine imposed by the government.

Police filed charges against them for violating Article 151 of the Revised Penal Code for resistance and disobedience to a person in authority.

As of 3 p.m. of May 13, Gigante and Castro were still under detention at the Moalboal Police Station.

While they already posted P3,000 bail for their violations, the lovers were still waiting for the release order to be issued by the Municipal Circuit Trial Court of Moalboal-Badian-Alcantara-Alegria.

LZB