A FUGITIVE Japanese businessman, who was ordered deported last year but who managed to disappear, finally surfaced at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Monday night and was immediately arrested.

Kenji Fukuda, 50, who was declared undesirable alien and ordered deported by former Immigration commissioner Alipio Fernandez on September 21, 2006, was arrested upon his arrival from Jakarta, Indonesia.

The Bureau of Immigration (BI) declared Fukuda an undesirable alien for violating his working permit.

When it was time to serve the warrant, however, Fukuda was nowhere to be found and despite several attempts he could not be located, said Wilfredo Poquez, chief of the BI Law Enforcement Division.

Fukuda, chief executive officer of Japan Medical Imaging based at the Subic Bay Freeport and, at the same time, vice president of Work Bell Philippines, was able to leave the country seven times since May 2006 until August of this year.

Fukuda’s passport, however, shows that he arrived in the country only three times, starting in May 2006 and in July and August last year.

“Fukuda was able to leave and arrive in the country undetected despite the order to deport him, and that shows that he has connections at the airport,” BI inteligence chief Victor Buco said.

Buco ordered an investigation to identify the immigration and airport personnel who facilitated Fukuda’s travel despite the deportation order against him.

Poquez said that Fukuda was declared undesirable alien because of the failure of the companies he represents to pay taxes in addition to violation of his working permit.

THE P83-million surveillance equipment contract that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) forged with a private company at the height of the government’s preparation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit in Cebu last year is not only “grossly overpriced” but is also “systematically flawed,” the complainant in the pending plunder case against the DPWH officials claimed.

SENATE investigators will start on Wednesday a formal inquiry into an alleged illegal investment syndicate involving Performance Investment Products Corp. (PIPC), which incurred losses amounting to millions of dollars worth of investments in foreign-exchange trade in what senators suspect to be “another investment scam.”

Soldiers tasked to augment policemen in maintaining peace and order when the antigraft court renders its decision on the plunder case of former President Joseph Estrada got their final order on Tuesday—enforce the decision, be it against or favorable to the fallen leader.

THE Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday allowed a limited live media coverage of the Sandiganbayan’s promulgation of the decision in the plunder cases against former President Joseph Estrada.

THE Bangko Sentral management is making life more difficult for an employee, denying him the privilege of overtime work usually on night shifts that boost the meager paychecks of regular work, apparently because of his activism.

A FUGITIVE Japanese businessman, who was ordered deported last year but who managed to disappear, finally surfaced at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Monday night and was immediately arrested.

Member-consumers of the Batangas Electric Cooperative II (Batelec II), the country’s largest, are alarmed by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to take over the criminal cases filed by the National Electrification Administration (NEA) against eight board members of the cooperative who have been linked to alleged multi-million-peso irregularities.