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Labatt decries dropping of labor cases vs Ylagan

Posted on 15 July 2019 No comments

By Vir B. Lumicao

Ylagan in photo taken after
her return to HK in Dec 2018

Former recruitment agent Ester P. Ylagan, who is accused of collecting millions of dollars from about 500 Filipino job applicants, has gotten away from 23 charges of collecting excessive commission when labour prosecutors withdrew the charges against her.

Magistrate Peter Yu Chun-cheung approved the dropping of the charges at the request of prosecutors when the case was heard at Eastern Court for the fifth time on Jul 12.

The prosecutors said that they had decided to withdraw the charges “to avoid jeopardizing possible action to be taken by the police”.

A statement sent by the Labour Department to The SUN said Ylagan had been arrested by the police for suspected involvement in more serious offences arising from the alleged job scam, and had subsequently gone bankrupt.

The cases stemmed from complaints filed in mid-2016 by about 200 Filipino job applicants from Hong Kong, Macau and the Philippines, who claimed to have paid Ylagan between $10,000 and $15,000 each for non-existent jobs in Britain and Canada.

Outgoing Labor Attaché Jalilo dela Torre deplored labour’s action, saying the withdrawal of the cases filed by the Employment Agency Administration sends a chilling message that the interests of foreign helpers here are not Hong Kong’s concern.

Outgoing Labatt says the dropping of charges sends 'chilling' message

“It is sad that in a case which victimized hundreds of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong, the EAA has decided this way. There is ample evidence showing the owner of this agency committed a criminal offence by charging placement fees in amounts way above what is allowed by Hong Kong law,” Labatt Dela Torre said.

“The EAA’s decision sends a chilling message to the community of 340,000 foreign domestic helpers—that your interests and the need to protect them are not our (Hong Kong’s) priority,” he said.

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“This flies in the face of the oft-repeated exhortation that foreign domestic workers are important to Hong Kong. In this case, the EAA seems to be telling the community they are not important,” Dela Torre said.

Consul Paulo Saret, head of the Consulate’s assistance to nationals section, said they will now press Hong Kong justice officials to speed up the filing of fraud and money laundering cases against Ylagan.

Ylagan, along with her solely owned company, Mike’s Secretarial Services, was originally charged by the EAA with 23 counts of “receiving payment other than the prescribed commission” under the Employment Ordinance.

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Ylagan also co-owned Emry’s Service Staff Employment Agency, which at the time of the filing of cases against her, was the biggest recruiter of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong.

More than 200 of her alleged victims had sued her in the Small Claims Tribunal in August 2016 to get back their money. About a dozen had won their claims, until the Tribunal decided to consolidate the remaining cases, and passed them on to the District Court for adjudication. They have remained there since. (https://www.sunwebhk.com/search?q=ester+ylagan)

Ylagan pre-empted the filing of complaints against her by going to the police in May 2016 to say that she herself had been a victim of a Britain-based job recruiter. She claimed she had lost $4.2 million to this recruiter, which included money paid her by her applicants, in effect admitting she had violated the law against overcharging.

But it was only in June this year that police arrested Ylagan on suspected fraud and money laundering, along with her former friend and adviser, suspended barrister Ody Lai.

Police say the cases against the two have already been elevated to the Department of Justice for evaluation and possible prosecution in court.

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Govt accountant report sought in Peya’s case

Posted on 11 May 2019 No comments

By The SUN

Irate customers swarmed Peya's office in Central in Dec 2018 after failing to board their flights

Hong Kong HK Police say they are just waiting for the government accountant’s report on the Peya Travel ticketing fiasco before deciding on how to proceed with the case.

“About Peya, we’re still waiting for the (government) accountant to furnish the accountant’s report as requested by the advising counsel,” a police investigator from the Regional Crime Unit said in an SMS message to Consul Paul Saret, who updated The SUN on the case on May 9.

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The officer also said the police have wrapped up its investigation into the case, which blew up in December 2017 when hundreds of Peya customers heading home for their Christmas vacation failed to board their flights because the travel agency did not pay the airlines for their tickets.

Ylagan

Earlier, the police also completed its investigation into the alleged fraud committed by employment agency owner Ester Ylagan in which hundreds of Filipino jobseekers were duped into paying between $10,000 and $15,000 for non-existent jobs in Britain and Canada.

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The case against Ylagan is now with the Department of Justice, which will determine whether a case should be filed against her for fraud.

“All remittance records have been collected and the duplicated files have been submitted to the Justice Department. The case is now with the Justice Department seeking for legal advice,” the officer said.

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Saret said the remittance records pertain to where Ylagan had sent the estimated $4 million that she collected in January to May in 2016 from about 500 job applicants, using her two companies: Emry’s Service Staff and Employment Agency, and Mike’s Secretarial Services.

But Saret said Ylagan’s alleged fraud toward her applicants is separate from the conspiracy to defraud and money laundering cases against Ylagan and suspended barrister Ody Lai Pui-ying that appeared to have arisen from the job scam.

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Ylagan, who was arrested on Jun 7 last year, a few months after returning to Hong Kong from the Philippines, is also facing several cases of overcharging the job applicants which were filed by the Labour Department.

Lai

Lai was arrested at the Hong Kong International Airport on Aug 30 last year as she returned also from the Philippines.

Meanwhile, Saret said the case against Peya should also move forward once the government accountant submits his report on the travel agency’s financial activities before the booking scandal forced it to shut down.

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Police arrested Rhea Donna Boyce or “Yanyan”, co-owner of Peya Travel, on Christmas Day last year in her Wanchai flat on suspicion of conspiring to defraud the company’s stranded clients.

Her Australian husband and Peya co-owner Peter Boyce was arrested afterwards but was eventually cleared.

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A co-accused, Peya’s sales and marketing manager Arnold Grospe, was arrested on Jun 6 last year.

Ylagan, Lai, Yanyan Boyce and Grospe are all out on police bail.

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Keep Labatt Jolly in HK

Posted on 04 April 2019 No comments

A speech delivered at a farewell tribute to Labor Attache Jalilo dela Torre on Mar 25 at Linklaters office in Central was excerpted from this.

It’s a privilege to join you all in paying tribute to our good friend, Labor Attache Jalilo dela Torre

My husband, Leo (Deocadiz, our publisher) and I, are among a few who have known Jolly since he was first posted here as deputy to the late Labor Attache Dante Ardivilla, in 1998. Through that association we managed to rope him in to write a column for our newspaper, The SUN. His column, Action Line, became a lifeline for many of our migrant workers looking for solutions to labor-related problems. We took that association further when we co-organized rights seminars for our migrant workers in several parts of Hong Kong, along with law professors from City University of Hong Kong. Shortly before he was posted elsewhere, Leo published Jolly’s Survive Hong Kong, a few copies of which have survived the passage of years, save for a few that we saved for ourselves.

But that friendship endured, through several more postings for Jolly – in Riyadh, Tel Aviv, and Canberra. I remember reaching out to Jolly when we heard of a scam to lure some of our workers to Australia on student visas using fake documents, and he responded, as expected, by providing all the information we needed to put a stop to that fraud.

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It’s the same kind of working relationship we have had with him since he was re-posted here three years ago as head of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office. We relay cases to him of our workers getting into some kind of a trouble, and Jolly, without fail, responds even far more than expected. I remember our associate editor, Vir Lumicao, tipping him off about two of our workers being photographed clinging precariously to a ledge while cleaning windows, and Jolly himself, along with his deputy Henry Tianero, rushed to Shatin to rescue the workers. No wonder that when Rinnalyn Duolog fell to her death while cleaning windows in a Tseung Kwan-o high rise, Jolly unilaterally clamped down on this dangerous practice that put many of our workers’ lives at risk, forcing Hong Kong authorities to follow suit. If there is one thing in fact that should be considered as Jolly’s legacy to us here, it should be the addition of dangerous window cleaning among the prohibited acts in the standard employment contract for our FDHs.

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There have been many other cases we’ve worked on that I daresay helped save our workers from harm, or abusive situations. There was the case of Ester Ylagan who lured about 500 Filipinos to apply for non-existent jobs in Canada and the UK in exchange for between $10,000 and $15k each. We brought about 100 of them in one go to Jolly, along with a case summary, and he lost no time drafting affidavits which we asked each one of the workers to sign so they could be authenticated and passed on to the police and the HK Labour Department within the same day. That was how we managed to speed up filing complaints with relevant authorities on this case. Sadly, though, after more than two years, Ester is still out on police bail and we still do not have an idea when or if, the case will be brought to court.

There was also the case of a couple who were stopped from recruiting more of our workers for illegal work in Russia. When Jolly heard from Vir about the couple’s impending arrival in Hong Kong, he immediately posted a warning on Facebook against the recruiters that they immediately hot-footed back to Moscow without managing to lure any more Filipina into their trap. In the process, he got a lot of threatening messages, with someone even setting up a fake account in his name, along with some family photos, in an obvious attempt to intimidate him. Jolly just kept exposing them.

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Then there was Lanie Grace, whose shocking notebook of penalties showed the extent of abuse she suffered at the hands of her employer and her live-in partner for 1 ½ years. Jolly gave the go-signal for her and another fellow Filipina in the house to be rescued, then provided them shelter and help in pursuing their labor claim. Lanie is now being helped in her cases by prominent human rights lawyer Patsy Ho as well as the Mission for Migrant Workers, and again, we are looking forward to having a happy ending to this story.

There have been many other such stories, like the time he called up the organizer of a sleazy beauty contest to explain why she allowed her fellow Filipina domestic workers to be exploited in that way, and she responded by going to his office and offering an apology. Somehow, though, an expat solicitor professing concern for the girls got wind of her plan, and came barging into Jolly’s office with threats and all, so we ended up calling the police to throw him out. Our Mr Cool hardly flinched.

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But Jolly has gone out of his way to extend help to our workers, not just during their direst moments, but also to encourage others in happier situations, to pursue higher learning or acquire new skills so they can better prepare for their eventual return home. He has opened the labor office to all sorts of livelihood and financial literacy training, and even to more creative pursuits, like script and news writing, and writing to relieve stress.

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Jolly never stops reaching out or bending over backwards to lend our workers a helping hand. And as many of us know, they have reciprocated in turn, to the extent that they held two emotion-laden protests to stop Jolly being recalled to the Home Office last year, on baseless grounds. Hearing of the news to get Jolly pulled out from Hong Kong again, many people in our community, migrants, residents, business and religious people alike, are again banding together to ask that Jolly be retained in Hong Kong, even for just a little bit more time. As one migrant leader said, much still needs to be done, and Jolly’s presence is pivotal in getting those things done.

So let’s not say farewell to him just yet, for the gods in Manila might still be convinced to let their most popular labor envoy to stay put.

Let’s all join the call to get Jolly retained in Hong Kong.

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Ylagan faces 23 overcharging charges in alleged UK, Canada job scam

Posted on 11 January 2019 No comments

Ylagan

By Vir B. Lumicao

Ester P. Ylagan, formerly the leading recruiter of Filipino domestic workers for Hong Kong, appeared in Eastern Court on Jan. 11 to face 23 charges of overcharging brought against her by the Labour Department.

Ylagan, who showed up in a casual attire of jeans and jacket, was represented by private lawyer Andrew Raffell of Pacific Chambers.

But despite the lapse of more than two years since the case was filed, the hearing was again reset to Apr 12 after prosecutors from the Employment Agencies Administration said they needed to consult with the police on a related fraud case.

The prosecution’s application to further delay the case prompted a rebuke from magistrate Yu Chun-pong.

Yu asked why the EAA had to wait for the police probe. The prosecutor replied that police were also planning to file a money laundering case against Ylagan for taking the workers’ money and moving it to other jurisdictions.

The prosecutor initially asked for a three-month adjournment, then changed it to six months, saying this was to ensure the police investigation would be completed by then.

But Yu was not pleased. He told the prosecutor to ascertain from the police whether they could finish their work in three months.

“You make them understand that this case has been going on for three years,” the magistrate said. He told the prosecutor that EAA must take the case seriously.

Yu ordered the prosecutor to ask the police when they would complete their fraud investigation and to tell them he won’t allow a further adjournment after this.

The prosecutor came back with an assurance from the police that the case would be completed in six months, “the minimum period”.

Despite this, the magistrate set the next hearing for Apr 12, with an order that no more adjournment shall be allowed.

He also told the EAA to start preparing for trial in case the defendant pleads not guilty.

Ylagan’s counsel also protested the further delay, saying his client is accused of a “simple commission case” and need not wait for the police to wrap up its investigation of an alleged fraud case against her.

Raffell also said the agency commission of 10% of the first monthly salary applied only to helpers deployed in Hong Kong but not to recruits for jobs in Britain and Canada.

Further, he said his client was also a victim of fraud and that the delay had “prolonged her suffering.”

The 23 cases filed against Ylagan are just a small fraction of the sworn complaints made by hundreds of Filipino workers against her, who claimed they had been charged by the recruiter between $10,000 and $15,000 for non-existent jobs in Britain and Canada.

The complainants told police Ylagan, co-owner of the former Emry’s Service Staff Employment Agency, used her Mike’s Secretarial Services to entice more than 200 workers to apply for the fake jobs.