Owner of warehouse with P6.4-B ‘shabu’ protests BOC suit

The owner of the Valenzuela City warehouse which yielded P6.4 billion worth of smuggled “shabu” (crystal meth) on Monday reiterated that the criminal complaint filed against him by the Bureau of Customs (BOC) should be rejected by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In a two-page counter-affidavit, Chinese national Chen Julong or Kenneth Tan insisted that he had nothing to do with the smuggling of 603 kilograms of illegal drugs which were seized on May 26 during a raid initiated by the BOC.

The recovery of the illegal drugs prompted several customs officials, among them then Customs chief Nicanor Faeldon, to quit.

Chen argued that the case filed by the BOC against him for violating Republic Act No. 10863, or the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, was already moot since the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had filed a similar case against him at the Valenzuela Regional Trial Court Branch 171. Marlon Ramos