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| Scene at PEYA'S shop in Worldwife Plaza at the height of the booking fiasco in December last year |
By Vir B. Lumicao
More victims of last year’s PEYA Travel airline booking
fiasco will be interviewed by the Hong Kong police
this Sunday, Apr 29, in a bid to hasten their investigation of the case, a
Consulate official said.
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| ATN head, Consul Paulo Saret |
Consul Paulo Saret, head of the assistance to nationals
section, told The SUN in a telephone conversation that about 20 complainants
will be interviewed at the Wanchai police station.
He had offered to have the interview done at the Consulate
to speed up the process, but the police declined due to their longstanding
policy of not taking their records out of the police station.
“There’ll be 20 or so complainants whom we will accompany to
the Regional Crime Unit on Sunday for the interview,” Saret said.
Saret said investigators told him they must have at least
250 statements from the victims to evaluate before deciding if they should file
a deception case against Peya’s executives. But they have not given a timeframe
for filing, he said.
In an interview earlier he said fewer than 200 of the 1,200 Filipinos
who had complained of getting bogus bookings from the travel agency had been
interviewed by the police. He urged the other complainants to step forward to
help the police speed up their investigation.
The police had reportedly told Saret that many of those on
the list provided by the Consulate either did not answer phone calls or failed
to show up for their scheduled interviews
Saret had contacted the police for an update on the case,
amid online queries from complainants on how the case was progressing.
“Tanong ko lang po mga madam/sir tungkol sa refund ng PEYA Travel
agency, kasi hanggang ngayon e wala pa po kayong update,” a certain Emie Lee
asked.
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| Police are still looking for Grospe |
Commenter Ladyjoy Magna Quina replied that the victims should
go to the police to file their statements so that the case would move forward.
But others blamed the Consulate for not informing them of the need to go to the
police.
According to Saret, Another hindrance cited by the police was
the disappearance of PEYA marketing manager Arnold Grospe, who they also want
to investigate. Grospe is reported to have fled to Macau in the wake of the
booking fiasco, and was reportedly spotted afterwards in Baguio
City in the Philippines
Grospe was invited to the Central Police Station on the
evening of Dec 20, when the booking mess unraveled, as hundreds of
Philippines-bound were not allowed to board their flights by airline staff who
said PEYA did not pay for their tickets.
PEYA owner Peter Brian Boyce was arrested Dec 27, two days
after his wife and co-owner Rhea Donna Bayona-Boyce, or Yanyan, who also acted
as general manager, was taken by police from their Wanchai flat.
Police said the couple was being investigated for possibly
defrauding customers of some $2 million in bogus airline bookings. On Apr 23,
the Police Public Relations Bureau told The SUN that the couple was ordered to
report again to the police in early May.
Saret said PEYA victims still trickle into ATN to file
complaints, adding they are likely those who had bought replacement tickets on
their own, and only recently learned they could still recover their loss with
help from the Consulate.
