Mary Jane Veloso’s suspected recruiter was taken Wednesday afternoon to the national police headquarters in Camp Crame in Quezon City.
Maria Kristina Sergio arrived at Camp Crame at around 5:30 p.m.
She on Tuesday surrendered to the Nueva Ecija Provincial Police Office on Tuesday together with her live-in partner Julius Lacanilao and sought police protection.
She said they have been receiving threats since they were tagged as the ones responsible for Veloso’s ill fate.
Veloso, who was arrested in Yogyakarta airport in Indonesia in 2010 after heroin was found in her suitcase, was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday morning.
She was given a reprieve after Philippine authorities alerted Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office of the development.
Sergio, in an interview Wednesday, claimed that she, too, was a victim as she strongly denied allegations that she duped Velasco into carrying the luggage that contained two kilos of heroin.
“I standby my statement that I don’t know anything about the bag she was referring to and I don’t know about the drugs,” Sergio told radio station dzMM’s Noli de Castro on Wednesday.
Sergio likewise refuted Velasco’s statement and narration of events that led to the latter’s arrest by Indonesian’s arrest for drug smuggling.
According to Sergio, she did not personally know Velasco until the latter and her husband went to their house in Talavera, Nueva Ecija asking for help.
Sergio said that her live-in partner, Julius Lacanilao, and Velasco’s husband were the ones who are close to each other, which prompted them to help Velasco find a job anywhere abroad.
“I did not recruit her, she voluntarily went to our house to help look for a job abroad,” she added.
Truth of the matter, Sergio said, the Velascos offered to pawn their tricycle but did not accept it out of pity because as it was their only means of livelihood.
Instead, Sergio added, she provided a P10,000 cash loan to Velasco, which she gave in two installments, P5,000 before they left and another P5,000 when they arrived in Malaysia, adding that she also paid P22,000 for Velasco’s plane ticket, plus hotel and food accommodations for three days.
Velasco allegedly promised to pay her once she landed a job in Malaysia, which never materialized.
At that time, Sergio said, they were planning to go on a holiday to Malaysia but her live-in partner decided to be left behind and lent the money allocated for his travel to Velasco.
There was no sure job, she added, waiting for Velasco in Malaysia but the latter, she claimed, was very persistent to go along with him and would go into hiding if could not find a work immediately.
“She insisted on going along with me. I did not force her to go,” she said in Filipino.
Coincidentally, Sergio claimed, a friend of her, a certain Cecille, a domestic helper, has already finished her contract and brought out the idea that Velasco took her place.
But before their planned meeting with Cecille, Velasco allegedly suddenly disappeared from the hotel where they were staying, but called up later to inform that she was already at the airport bound for Indonesia.
Sergio claimed that she often saw Velasco making a phone call or went out of the hotel alone, matters, which she presumed as personal matter and did not interfere.
In her statement, Velasco narrated that after they arrived in Malaysia, they went shopping wherein Sergio allegedly bought her a lot new dresses, thus the need for a new bag that accommodate her personal things because she has only a backpack, two pairs of jeans and shirts when she left the Philippines.
According to Velasco, a tall black man, identified only as “Ike,” handed her a new travelling bag allegedly on instructions of Sergio, adding that Sergio also gave her $500 before she left for Indonesia.
But Sergio said that she has not seen the man Velasco was referring nor she knew about the bag, which was later found by Indonesian authorities to contain two kilos of morphine.
Sergio likewise denied giving Velasco $500, except for the P10,000 she gave as a loan to Velasco.