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The College of Saint Benilde on Friday denied that
two suspects in the basketball game-fixing case and the complainant
were its students.
The school’s athletic director,
Henry Atayde, said James Ryan Mangaran and Rajan Chandumal, the
suspects, and Wilfred Uy, the complainant, are not enrolled in Saint
Benilde.
Saint Benilde plays in the
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the country’s
oldest college basketball league.
On Thursday the National Bureau
of Investigation announced it had arrested Saint Benilde star player
Paolo Orbeta on Uy’s allegation that he had shaved points during
his team’s game against San Sebastian College-Recoletos on July
18.
The NBI is looking for a fifth
suspect it identified as Luigi Guingon.
The agency described Mangaran
as Orbeta’s schoolmate, Chandumal as a salesman, and Elago a
police inspector assigned to the Philippine Public Safety College in
Camp Crame.
“As far as our school records
is concern, the three others except Paolo Orbeta are not student of
our school. Only Orbeta is a student of CSB,” Atayde told in a
press conference at the NCAA management committee conference room
inside The Arena gym in San Juan.
He said that based on the NBI
investigation, the school administration has suspended Orbeta.
NCAA management committee
chairman Efren Jose Supan described Orbeta’s case as an isolated
case. “The NCAA has been very vigilant in terms of monitoring any
forms of illegal gambling as evidenced by working closely with NBI
since the 81st season. This season has been very quiet and incident
like this is purely an isolated case allegedly involving an
individual,” he said.
Supan said that as a consequence
of Orbeta’s arrest, the NCAA would monitor the performances of
referees, while the coaches must submit an evaluation of the
performance of their players.
--Frank Calapre
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