2 mayors sued over sale of pigs found in ‘shabu’ lab

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO— The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) on Tuesday filed graft cases against two Pampanga mayors in the Office of the Ombudsman for the sale of 4,000 hogs at a piggery that concealed an underground “shabu” laboratory in Magalang town on Sept. 7 last year.

Magalang Mayor Ma. Lourdes Paras-Lacson sold the pigs to Bacolor Mayor Jose Maria Hizon “without consulting the PDEA or proper authorities,” said Wilkins Villanueva, PDEA National Capital Region director.

Villanueva led the raid on the 4-hectare piggery in Barangay Balitucan (also known as San Ildefonso). His team discovered the laboratory beneath an animal feed mill-cum-warehouse.

“We sued [them] because Republic Act No. 9165 [Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002] states that the proceeds or profits from a facility [used in the manufacture or storage of illegal drugs] should be under the custody of the court,” he said.

He said the mayors decided on their own and ignored the fact that the pigs were evidence in establishing that the piggery was a front to hide the laboratory. He said the police sent personnel to secure the compound.

Also sued were five government employees, who conducted the bidding, and Barangay Balitucan chief, Marcial Alfaro.

“I stand on the firm ground that the courses of actions that were done to dispose [of] the pigs were to safeguard the general welfare of the people,” Lacson said, citing sanitation concerns and the fate of the pigs which were abandoned by their caretakers after the laboratory was seized.

The decision, she said, was “in consonance with the advice and legal opinion of the Department of the Interior and Local Government.”

The pigs were sold through bidding and the proceeds were still held in a trust fund, she said.

Lacson said Pampanga’s Best, owned by Hizon’s family, won the auction by lot at P7 million.

“We can’t buy the pigs because that is not in our mandate,” she said.

Hizon said he should not be implicated in the case because his action was “not in line with my official function as a chief executive.”

“I was a buyer in good faith,” he said.

PDEA counted 3,998 pigs at the time of the raid. In the local government’s inventory, the hogs numbered 4,038, but it said 120 died a day after the raid.

Seven Chinese nationals were arrested during the raid and had been jailed for running an illegal drug laboratory. The piggery was 3 kilometers from the police’s Regional Training Center and the Central Luzon Drug Rehabilitation Center.

Five minors found in the piggery had been turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development.