Cops skimmed seized drugs? House wants probe
The House of Representatives’ committee on dangerous drugs has demanded a physical inventory of some 20 kilos of shabu worth P100 million that local police had seized but failed to report after raiding a so-called mega shabu laboratory in Catanduanes three months ago.
Members of the committee, chaired by Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, held a public hearing in this province’s capital town of Virac last Thursday on the shabu laboratory. But then they discovered that the local police had declared the seizure of only 792 grams of methamphetamine.
“It is only now that this detail surfaced,” Barbers said.
The local police explained they did not include the 20 kilos of shabu when they made the report to the House committee, as it was not yet confirmed to be such when they made their first inventory of confiscated items.
Last Nov. 26 local police operatives raided the Catanduanes laboratory, where they reportedly recovered various chemical substances and six units of hydrogenator that can produce 1.2 tons of shabu worth P6 million per week.
The unreported 20 kilos of shabu were still in liquid form and deposited in the crime laboratory at Camp General Simeon Ola in Bicol, they said.
Local police also used only 792 grams of shabu in filing a complaint against the warehouse caretaker, Lorenzo Peñera, and Jason Uy, the alleged owner of the lab.
Zamboanga del Norte Rep. Seth Frederick Jalosjos of the First District said the failure to include the big volume of shabu was “very dangerous,” even as he raised a motion to make ocular and physical inspections of it in the House committee’s next hearing.
Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Rodel Batocabe, for his part, lamented the local police’s exceedingly slow action on amending the complaint.
“It took three months already after the discovery of the shabu lab happened. Our police must act faster because this is a very big case,” Batocabe said.
Because of inconsistencies in their testimonies, Barbers and committee vice-chairman Rep. Arnolfo Teves Jr. asked the resource persons to be placed under oath in the entire proceedings Thursday.
The lawmakers added they would also invite some of them to Congress to reveal what they know in an executive session.
Catanduanes Gov. Joseph Cua said it seems some politicians in the province are using the investigation for political mileage.
“There is a politician here (Catanduanes), who is riding on the issue,” Cua said. “He should stop it because it might derail the efforts of the government to fight illegal drugs.”
Cua suspects that some authorities might be the reason the owner of the shabu laboratory had managed to escape.
“We don’t even know if these suspects are still alive,” Cua said.
The case against the suspects and the custody of the shabu laboratory has been transferred to the office of Assistant State Prosecutor Alexander Suarez at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Barbers and the other congressmen were piqued by what they believed was negligence of local officials – from the policemen to the provincial prosecutor and the judge – on how the Chinese suspects managed to escape the island-province.
The lawmakers vowed to probe into how a shabu laboratory that big managed to exist without official clearance.
“We would dig further on the seeming negligence and possible lapses committed by law enforcement agencies and local government offices that, among others, have allowed such a huge shabu lab in Virac to get constructed and to operate,” Barbers said.