Bureau of Corrections Director General Gerald Bantag has faced a series of unusual allegations since being suspended last month, including the breeding of horses and snakes at the overcrowded prison complex at the southern fringe of metropolitan Manila and neglect resulting in the bodies of 176 prisoners piling up at a funeral home.Following Bantag's suspension, authorities discovered a huge pit dug by backhoes in the prison complex in Muntinlupa city with what appeared to be a shallow tunnel at the bottom.But Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said Bantag told him a few months ago that the excavation was part of a search for a fabled treasure supposedly buried by Japanese occupation forces under Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita during World War II.Bantag was suspended by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. last month amid an investigation into the death of an imprisoned gangster, Jun Villamor, whom a confessed gunman identified as the person who asked him to kill radio commentator Percival Mabasa on Oct. 3 for 550,000 pesos ($9,650).Speaking to CBS' "60 Minutes" while she was out on parole after a previous conviction in late 2019, journalist and Nobel Prize laureate Maria Ressa compared reporting on news in the Philippines to being in a war zone."