THE Cebu City Attorney’s Office recommended the closure of at least 10 branches of Jerome’s Pawnshop & General Merchandise in Cebu City due to violations of some Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) rules.
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, though, postponed the closure and gave the owner six months to comply with the BSP requirements.
As early as Nov. 26, 2018, City Attorney III Feliciano M. Alinson Jr. recommended the closure of the 10 pawnshop outlets following a complaint filed by the BSP.
On Dec. 10, 2018, the closure order was forwarded to the Office of the Mayor.
Osmeña, in an interview on Thursday, Jan. 10, confirmed there is an order to close the pawnshops but said he postponed its implementation.
“There was already an instruction to close them, and they (Jerome Avila) approached me. I wrote there (on the closure order) it’s postponed, but not lifted,” Osmeña said.
Jerome Avila, the sole proprietor of the pawnshop chain, said the closure order was shelved after his meeting with Osmeña at the latter’s residence last week.
The Avilas of Barangay Kamagayan are supporters of Partido Barug, the rival of Osmeña’s group Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan.
The City Attorney’s Office’s investigation on the pawnshop started when the BSP referred to the Office of the Mayor a complaint filed against the pawnshop’s branch on Sanciangko St.
A person whose iPad mini was stolen and pawned at Jerome’s pawnshop had filed a complaint before the BSP when the pawnshop refused to release his device until the P3,500 principal for the pawned item was paid.
In the course of its investigation, the BSP found out that the pawnshops were never registered since it began operating in 2002. The Pawnshop Regulation Act requires pawnshop operators to register with the BSP before they can start operating.
It also violated BSP Circular 938 for operating more than 10 branches under a single proprietorship. (Trina Louise RIvera & Ivan Gregory Tan, USJ-R Interns)