P15K bait gets land title ‘fixer’

The National Bureau of Investigation filed extortion charges against an employee of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources who was arrested after he allegedly accepted bribe money from a land title applicant on Friday in Manila.

NBI identified the suspect as Jovix Leonida Rivera, 33, a special investigator of the Bureau of Lands–National Capital Region.

Rivera’s arrest stemmed from a complaint filed by Marjorie Rubi Codangos, who said Rivera asked for P20,000 so he could expedite her application for a residential free patent. Rivera agreed to lower the amount to P15,000 after she haggled.

“The suspect told the complainant the application will pass through many channels before it could be processed and to expedite it she must pay the amount,” NBI said in a statement on Saturday.

Codangos said she filed the complaint after she found out that the processing of the documents she needed was actually free of charge.

Rivera was arrested in an entrapment operation at a coffee shop in Ermita after he took an envelope containing the money from Codangos. Nancy C. Carvajal