19 DRUG LORDS ‘STILL IN REGION’

They move at least a kilo of shabu each week, PDEA 7 head says; last Friday, PDEA seized a P20-million stash.

Sixteen personalities in Cebu and three in Bohol Province are on a list of suspected drug lords the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) is monitoring, a top official said. PDEA 7 Director Yogi Ruiz said investigations are ongoing against the 19, a day after his team caught Marwin Abelgas in Talisay City.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) 7 is monitoring 19 drug lords after they caught Marwin Abelgas, the alleged heir of slain drug lord Jeffrey “Jaguar” Diaz.

“We have additional drug lords for every region that’s why we have a priority list. Here in Region 7, we have 20 minus one for Abelgas,” PDEA 7 Director Yogi Filemon Ruiz said.

The 19 drug personalities are being investigated and will be the subject of PDEA 7’s future anti-narcotics operation.

“Three of them are based in Bohol while the rest is in differ- ent areas in Cebu,” Ruiz said.

They can be considered as drug lords, Ruiz said, because they are capable of selling a minimum of one kilogram of shabu per week.

“So that’s already a big distribution at work,” he said.

Abelgas was caught inside a subdivision in Barangay Dumlog, Talisay City with five kilos of shabu with an estimated worth of P20 million.

He reportedly used the contacts of Diaz to continue the illegal drug trade.

His arrest came two days after President Rodrigo Duterte announced that Cebu has the highest illegal drug rate in the country.

Drug players have been taking advantage that Cebu has always been the center of economics in Region 7, making it a transshipment point because of its numerous piers and ports, he added.

The identified drug lords are a mixture of old names and new names who were being monitored by the agency.

Before the lifting of the police’s anti-drug operation, the drug personalities underestimated the PDEA 7 for having few personnel.

“They acted up before. But now that the police are back, we can focus on our high-value targets,” Ruiz said.

He also encouraged self-confessed drug lord Franz Sabalones’s lawyer Louie Arma to share the information of new players allegedly using his client’s name to hide their suppliers’ tracks.

“If he knew them, he should’ve told us. If there are indeed new players, he should tell us, too,” he said.

“If it will lead to the defense of their client, then he should reveal the names to us. Unless they’re just assuming that there are new players,” Ruiz said.

Sabalones’s three bank accounts and eight real properties have been frozen.

Arma, in an earlier interview, said that they will first face the drug cases filed by the Department of Justice against them before they focus on the freeze order.