BI deports Sokor fugitive

The Bureau of Immigration (BI) has deported a South Korean fugitive who bolted the bureau’s detention cell in Taguig City more than four years ago but was re-arrested in Mindanao last month, it was learned yesterday.

Immigration Commissioner Ricardo David Jr. said You Hang Mok, 50, was deported to Incheon, South Korea last Friday aboard a Korean Airlines flight from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

David said Mok was expelled barely a few weeks after his rearrest because he was already issued a summary deportation order by the BI board of commissioners in 2006.

“He was also included in our blacklist, thus he is banned from re-entering the Philippines ,” the BI chief said.

David described the deportee as an undesirable alien because he blatanly violated the country’s immigration law by escaping from the bureau’s custory to evade deportation to his country where he is a wanted criminal.

BI Intelligence chief Maria Antonette Bucasas-Mangrobang said BI agents arrested Mok at a golf club in Ozamis City last Oct. 4 after months of intensive surveillance.

She said the Korean, who escaped from BI custody on March 4, 2007, is wanted by authorities in Seoul for large-scale estafa.

“He fled Korea to evade prosecution and there were reports alleging that he was able to establish a business here,” Mangrobang added.

Mok’s re-arrest became controversial when a major newspaper published a photograph of him with President Aquino and other Mindanao politicians who paid a courtesy call on the Chief Executive in Malacanang last year.

BI intelligence officials said it was Mok’s appearance at the Palace event that led them to trace his whereabouts and facilitate his re-arrest and deportation. Freddie Cortez, Media Officer, Bureau of Immigration