Enrile orders coral smuggling suspects arrested

Senators are rushing in where law enforcers have feared to tread.

Incensed over the government’s failure to stop massive marine poaching, the Senate on Wednesday ordered the arrest of Olivia Li and husband Joe Pring, who are believed to be behind the foiled attempt to smuggle some P35 million worth of black sea corals.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile himself moved to arrest the Chinese couple following their failure to show up at the environment committee hearing into widespread destruction of the country’s marine resources.

“We will have a manhunt against this man and we will show these law enforcement agencies how we do a manhunt,” Enrile said.

“You cannot police the entire nation and the only way to do it is to send some of (the poachers) to jail and let’s see if anybody will do it again,” he added.

At one point, Enrile told law enforcers to be more aggressive.

“You cannot stop poaching in the marine resources of this country unless you shoot some of them. That’s how brutal it is. That’s law enforcement,” he said.

The senator became furious when he learned that the National Bureau of Investigation had filed at least two poaching cases against Pring, a Chinese national operating a company with his wife in Zamboanga City, one in 2005 and another in 2007.

But until now, both cases are still “pending for preliminary investigation” in the Zamboanga City prosecutor’s office, under a certain Fiscal Jimenez Jr., according to Manuel Almendares, NBI director for the Zamboanga Peninsula.

“That prosecutor has a lot of explaining to do,” Enrile said. “It’s very obvious that these people are dribbling the case … an inordinate delay like this has a cause and I suspect that the cause is pesos and centavos.”

Nowhere to be found

Almendares said Pring—who also went by various aliases, including Li Yu Ming, Lee Nyu Ming, Jo Peng Li and Jo Peng—was “nowhere to be found” in Zamboanga as of Tuesday.

Enrile asked the Senate committee on the environment to issue an order freezing “all the objects of this crime.”

The acting police chief in Zamboanga City, Senior Supt. Edwin de Ocampo, said officers sent to get the couple after they failed to attend the hearing returned empty-handed. “They left the house in haste,” he said.

Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, the committee chair, grilled Kim Atillano, owner of JKA Transport System, which shipped Pring’s apparent contraband. Also in attendance was Ireneo Penuliar, Atillano’s contact in Manila.

With his lawyer coaching him throughout the hearing, Atillano insisted that he was not liable for the smuggled black sea corals, endangered turtles and other forms of marine life, which his company had shipped.

Atillano said he began doing business with Olivia Li either in 2009 or 2010. He said a previous shipment involved “shark’s skin, bones and sea cucumber.”

“Mr. Atillano, I’m sorry to say this, but it appears that you are in cahoots (with Li) in this transaction,” Zubiri told him.

Amid Zubiri’s questioning, Enrile walked into the room and advised the government to just include all suspects in the criminal charges.

“Charge all of them,” Enrile said. “No one is exempted. The burden is now for them to prove their innocence.”

“I’m not anti-Chinese. I’m not a racist. But if you see the list of all violations of the law here, you will always see short surnames. That’s a fact. And it’s about time we call a spade a spade.”

Self-defense

The government, Enrile said, has the right to “exercise self-defense” against poachers “committing a crime against the Filipino people.”

“Nobody planted those corals. God created them and they were destroying it. They’re causing injury to the livelihood of many people. They degrade the marine environment of the country,” he said.

Zubiri later said that a hold-departure order had been issued against the Chinese couple, JKA officials and other suspects in the smuggling attempt.

His committee also issued a subpoena to Benny Yu and his wife Rosario to appear in the next hearing on Monday. The couple own the warehouse where Li had kept the contraband. With a report from Julie S. Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao