Manila probing drug syndicates

700 overseas Filipino workers have been turned into mules, records show

Philippine police and other government agencies are cooperating in efforts to stop international drug trafficking syndicates from victimising overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), 700 of whom have been arrested worldwide, officials have said.

The Philippine National Police (PNP), National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) are pooling resources together to stop international syndicates that push cocaine and heroin.

“They have already victimised unwitting OFWs,” said acting PNP head, deputy Director General Leonardo Espina, adding the number of women victims has been increasing through the years.

NBI agents have started to gather sworn statements of 690 OFWs imprisoned worldwide due to drug-related cases, 227 of them are in China, and 85 have received death sentences, a source who requested for anonymity told Gulf News.

“PDEA agents have been extracting information from recruiters and relatives of OFWs for leads to local conduits of international drug trafficking syndicates,” said the same source, adding the local recruiters began as drug traffickers.

In late April this year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo stopped the execution of Mary Jane Veloso. Her testimony before NBI agents in her prison cell in Indonesia led to the arrest of two Filipino drug-recruiters. whom she claimed were responsible for the 2.6 kilos of heroin that authorities confiscated from her luggage at the Yogyakarta Airport in 2010.

In early April this year, a lower court in the United Arab Emirates gave a 10-year sentence to a 38-year old Filipino who tried to smuggle 6.4 kilos of cocaine from Brazil to Vietnam via Dubai in October 2014.