Senator dares PR firm to face probe
Sen. Francis Tolentino rebuked officials of the InfinitUs Marketing Solutions Inc. for not explaining the P930,000 they received from the Chinese Embassy to assail the Philippine position on the West Philippine Sea.
Instead of just making blanket denials online, Tolentino said the company executives, including its two Chinese incorporators, should answer the allegations against them, under oath, at the hearing of the Senate committee on maritime and admiralty zones on Monday.
“InfinitUs should explain why they received payment [from the Chinese Embassy] after they admitted the existence of the check,” Tolentino told the Inquirer.
“What’s the purpose of that payment?” he asked. “[I don’t think] they will just get that check for no reason.”
Senate probe
Tolentino was referring to a check for P930,000 that the Chinese Embassy supposedly issued to InfinitUs for its “services.”
“The money that the Chinese Embassy paid was for something hidden and sinister. It was to finance a troll farm,” he said when his Senate committee last a hearing on April 24.
The committee is set to resume its hearing next week and Tolentino challenged the company’s officers, including two Chinese incorporators, to appear at the Senate probe.
During a committee hearing on April, the reelectionist senator presented documents, including a service agreement and a check, to show that InfinitUs was contracted by the embassy to provide “keyboard warriors” to spread pro-China narratives on the West Philippine Sea issue.
He said China’s social media trolls also targeted him, President Marcos and other government officials who had called out Beijing’s illegal activities in the country’s 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone.
“InfinitUs has been making denials before the media. It would be better for them to just attend the hearing and say what they want to say there under oath,” Tolentino said in a news briefing in Batangas City.
He said among those who were summoned to the hearing on May 5 were Min Li and Pin Li, the Chinese incorporators of InfinitUs, as shown in the documents it submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Aside from the two Chinese nationals, SEC documents identified other Filipino incorporators of the company as Ruby Benig Gestiada, Christine Bergantinos Li and Myka Isabel Basco.
Misleading its own people
Also on Saturday, the National Maritime Council (NMC) hit China’s disinformation drive about its supposed control of Pag-asa Cay 2, or the sandbars near Pag-asa Island.“Through its state-controlled media, China uses disinformation to mislead its own people and the international community about the continuing illegality of its activities in the West Philippine Sea,” the agency said in a statement.
The NMC cited Chinese state media’s claims about the alleged seizure of Pag-asa Cay 2, an integral part of the country’s national territory in the West Philippine Sea, as a “clear example of the disinformation activities of the Chinese government.”
The disinformation drive “made it appear that China has effective control of the cay by displaying its flag and conducting waste collection.”
The NMC then blamed China for the degradation of the environment around Pag-asa Island and its cays.
It pointed to the constant illegal swarming of Chinese vessels in the area and China’s massive artificial island-building in Zamora Reef, a low-tide elevation that forms part of Pag-asa Island’s territorial sea.
The NMC called on China to comply with its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2016 South China Sea arbitral ruling and to properly implement the 2002 Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.
It also assured the Philippines will always pursue peaceful means in resolving disputes and uphold a rules-based international order.
The NMC was created by Mr. Marcos last year to strengthen maritime security and increase maritime domain awareness among Filipinos amid the Philippines’ territorial dispute with China over the West Philippine Sea.
