By Dane Angelo M. Enerio
Tiger Resort, Leisure and Entertainment, Inc. (TRLEI), owner of casino resort Okada Manila, has asked the Department of Justice (DoJ) to reverse the dismissal of the Office of the City Prosecutor (OCP) of Parañaque City of the two separate estafa cases filed against Japanese gambling mogul Kazuo Okada.
In two separate motions received by the DoJ on June 13 and 14, TRLEI urged the department to void and vacate Assistant City Prosecutor Romeo G. Bautista IV’s decisions dated May 11 and 18 which dismissed for lack of probable cause the cases against Mr. Okada and several others that charged them with misappropriation of funds and fraud amounting to $10 million.
The DoJ was also asked to indict the respondents anew with the same charges as according to both motions, “the Assailed (Resolutions are) void and must be vacated for having been resolved and issued in violation of complainant’s due process rights.”
The OCP of Parañaque was also criticized for granting Mr. Okada’s counter-affidavit, saying, “it smacks of partiality and was grave error for the OCP Parañaque to have extended concessions and granted Respondent Okada’s Motion to Reopen and admitted Respondent Okada’s consularized Counter-Affidavit dated 22 January 2018.”
Citing the 2008 Revised Manual for Prosecutors, TRLEI said in their motions, “[o]nly a counter-affidavit subscribed and sworn to by the respondent before the public prosecutor can dispute or put at issue the allegations in the complaint.”
Pointing out that Mr. Okada’s counter-affidavit was not subscribed and sworn to before a public prosecutor in the Philippines but was rather consularized abroad, TRLEI explained, “[c]learly, this is not in accord with the 2008 Revised Manual for Prosecutors” and that “the OCP Parañaque, with due respect, committed grave error and again showed partiality to Respondent Okada.”
According to TRLEI’s motions to vacate, “the admitted leakage of the assailed (resolutions) to respondent Okada’s camp/Chloe Kim before its official release to the parties casts serious doubt on the impartiality, fairness, and credibility of City Prosecutor Paudac and constitutes a grave denial of due process.”
On the $3,158,835.62 misappropriation of funds charge against Mr. Okada and former Okada Manila chief operating officer and president Takahiro Usui, TRLEI said “[T]he OCP Parañaque gravely erred in dismissing the criminal complaint against respondents based on false assumptions, tenuous grounds, and wrong conclusions.”
TRLEI said it was “gravely erroneous for the OCP Parañaque to hastily conclude that the criminal complaint filed by Complainant against Respondents is an intra-corporate dispute, despite the lack of any existing intra-corporate relations between them” and that they have “sufficiently shown that all elements of estafa under Article 315, paragraph 1(B) of the Revised Penal Code are present.”
As for the $7,091,065.78 fraud case against Mr. Okada, his supply company Aruze Philippines Manufacturing, Inc. (APMI), Kengo Takeda, and Tetsuya Yokota, TRLEI insisted, “the OCP Parañaque gravely erred in not finding probable cause to believe that respondents committed the crime of estafa.”
TRLEI had sought for the inhibition of City Prosecutor Amerhassan C. Paudac after copies of the unreleased resolutions were leaked on social media platforms as early as May 18 by a certain Chloe Kim, who was a previous food and beverage manager at Okada Manila where Mr. Okada was chief executive officer until he was sacked in June of last year.
Mr. Paudac would inhibit himself from the case, along with Prosecutor General Jorge G. Catalan who was also requested by TRLEI to recuse for being involved in a previous perjury case against Mr. Okada. The DoJ would also assign the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to investigate the leak following TRLEI’s request.

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