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MANILA - A former contractor for passport issuance did not run off with its data, but only failed to help in resolving a system mismatch because the government and a new subcontractor were too "embarrassed" to ask for help, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. said Tuesday.

Yasay's successor, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., recently claimed that French firm Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciare supposedly ran off with passport data. This forced government to rebuild the database for all passports issued before 2010, he said.

Oberthur, however, was only tapped by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to build a personalized system for passports and did not have a copy of the data, said Yasay.

Under the Arroyo administration, the BSP was in charge of printing machine readable passports (MRP) that were compliant with standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, noted Yasay.

The succeeding Aquino government, however, shifted to e-passports "for no compelling reason," Yasay told radio DZMM.

The APO Production Unit Inc., which is under the then Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), bagged the contract for printing the new passports.

Oberthur's system, however, had a different format from that of United Graphic Expression Corp. (UGEC), a private firm that APO subcontracted, said Yasay.

This prevented UGEC from transferring the passport data to its own system, he said.

"Ang dapat sanang gagawin ng UGEC at DFA, humingi ng tulong sa Oberthur. Nahiya ang DFA at nahiya ang UGEC na lumapit sa Oberthur dahil initsa puwera" he told radio DZMM.

(UGEC and the DFA should have asked for help from Oberthur. The DFA and UGEC were too embarrassed to approach Oberthur because it was brushed aside.)

"Sinasabi ni Secretary Locsin na we cannot do anything about it because we, meaning the DFA, was wrong," he continued.

The National Privacy Commission is looking into the issue. Senators Risa Hontiveros and Antonio Trillanes also filed resolutions seeking a legislative inquiry into the supposed data breach.

Sen. Nancy Binay, meanwhile, urged the Office of the Solicitor General to review all contracts with third party data managers and ensure that government data cannot be held hostage.