DAVAO CITY – The interagency task force investigating the December 2017 fire on the NCCC Mall here filed criminal complaints on Thursday against 33 persons, including family members of the mall owner.
The task force filed the complaint at 1:30 pm on Thursday before the City Prosecutor’s Office before meeting family members and relatives of 38 call center agents who perished in the fire.
The complaints were lumped into four general criminal complaints: reckless imprudence resulting to multiple homicide and frustrated homicide, violation of the anti-graft and corrupt practices, violation of the provision of the fire code, and falsification of public documents.
Six members of the Lim family, including one Lafayette Lim, chief executive officer of the LTS Malls Inc, were named in the homicide case. The LTS Malls Inc. operates the NCCC Mall that burned on December 23 last year. Thirty-eight call center agents of the US digital research company, Survey Sampling International. Its chairman of the board, Jose Antonio San Gabriel, was also included in the homicide case.
The complaint was signed by Fire Superintendent Anthony F. Figurasin, team leader of the anti-arson section of the task force, “on behalf of the State and ‘People versus’ the respondents, said retired Police Superintendent Warlito P. Daus, the executive assistant and chief of staff of the Office of the Undersecretary on Public Safety of the Department of the Interior and Local Government.
The complaint was received by City Prosecutor Nestor Ledesma, who told the task force that he would assemble immediately a team of three or four prosecutors to conduct the preliminary investigation.
Ledesma has also asked an extension of from the mandated 60 days to resolve the complaint due to the number of witnesses, all members or relatives of the victims, and the complexity of the case, Daus said.
At that time frame, the resolution of the case would likely happen by the end of November, which still falls under Ledesma’s commitment to the task force that he would not allow the case to drag on to the first anniversary of the fire on December 23.
Asked why it took them eight months to complete the investigation, Daus said, “We just wanted to ensure that the case is airtight”. Besides, he added, the change in the Secretary of the Department of Justice also contributed to the delay in the investigation.
Family members and relatives of the victims were mum on what transpired in the one-hour closed door meeting but two families from Maa here and from Don Marcelino town of Davao Occidental confided to BusinessMIrror that they were briefed on the status of the case, “why it took that long to finish the investigation and that they assured us that they are supporting us in the case”.
“We told them that there would be case to be filed at the Office of the Deputy Ombudsman for Mindanao,” a sister of a male victim from Maa said.
Many women were teary-eyed after going out from the room provided by the National Economic Development Authority.
Daus said they assured the families that they would be supporting them in the criminal cases filed. He added that administrative charges were expected to be filed immediately but he said the respondents from the members of the Davao City Bureau of Fire Protection were already held in preventive suspension “to avoid influencing the case”.