Court orders release of 'Pinoy' mining exec

A Taguig court has ordered the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to release Global Ferronickel Holdings Inc. (FNI) chairman Joseph Sy after granting his petition for habeas corpus.

- By EJ MACABABBAD

Sy was detained by BI agents upon his arrival at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 on Aug. 21 aboard a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong. He has since been held at the BI facility inside Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig.

The FNI chief was accused of misrepresenting his Filipino citizenship after the BI found that fingerprints from his passport allegedly matched those of a Chinese national named Chen Zhong Zen, who holds an Alien Certificate of Registration identity card (ACR I-Card).

In granting Sy’s habeas corpus petition, Presiding Judge Paz Esperanza Cortes of Taguig Regional Trial Court Branch 271 gave “superior weight” to the tycoon’s birth certificates and passports as proof of his Filipino citizenship.

“As between birth certificates and passports of Joseph Cue Sy and the ACR I-Card, the former are of more weight than the latter. They are actually of superior weight, not just substantial,” Cortes wrote in her 35-page ruling dated Sept. 4.