Another official from the Bureau of Internal Revenue has filed five counts of libel, five counts of incriminatory machination, six counts of cyber libel and six counts of cyber forgery or computer-related forgery against columnist Ramon Tulfo before the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office.
In a 36-page complaint, Assistant Commissioner for Client Support Services Teresita Angeles insisted she was not the woman behind the “manufactured video recording” that caused furor on social media, saying Tulfo had spread false accusations against her.
The charges stemmed from Tulfo’s Aug. 6 column in The Manila Times —“In My Line of Sight”—regarding the video recording that contained conversations “between a man and a woman” and was posted on his social media account.
Angeles said the video “was manufactured, [and] that the conversation contained therein never happened” about having a relationship since she and another BIR employee were not the persons referred to.
The complainant wanted Tulfo to indemnify her P40 million in moral and exemplary damages, apart from attorney’s fees and litigation expenses. She also implicated the executives of The Manila Times.
Tulfo alleged that the conversation happened in August 2017 at the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States of America, where both “Angeles and Samson were taking up short courses.”
Samson earlier filed libel and cyber libel charges against Tulfo, saying he had never set foot in the US.
Angeles, for her part, said Tulfo would make his own defamatory interpretation and explanation of the conversation, publicize and project it as if it were true and factual.
“Of course, with his numerous followers, the public would lightly assume it to be true,” the complaint read.
Angeles said the article“was meant to elicit and in fact, elicited negative insults and comments from the public, and has caused dishonor and discredit to myself.”
“It went viral and gained notoriety in the world wide web almost at an instant which allowed a number of harsh public comments and insults in his column and in his social media account,” she added.
She lamented Tulfo was able to besmirch her reputation as a public servant “with an untarnished record in the BIR that I have worked for and served for almost 30 years.”
The respondent, in his Internet post, tagged Samson and Angeles as the voices behind the hazy video, saying “Yes, it seems that the woman and the man had just had terrific sex when that conversation was recorded—apparently by the woman herself.”