Duterte still trusts Lapeña; probe into shabu smuggling in full swing
PDEA chief Aaron Aquino inspects one of four magnetic lifters that contained traces of “shabu” (crystal meth) already emptied by drug traders that smuggled about P6.8 billion of the illegal drug in a Cavite warehouse on Friday. Authorities found the massive steel devices with hollowed parts where the drugs were hidden inside a warehouse in General Mariano Alvarez town in a follow-up operation after seizing 500 kilograms of shabu worth P4.3 billion (below) inside two lifters at the international container port in Manila two days earlier. (Photo by EDWIN BACASMAS)
Updated 3 p.m.
Bureau of Customs (BOC) Chief Isidro Lapeña still has the trust and confidence of President Rodrigo Duterte even after 1 ton of shabu with an estimated value of P6.8 billion was smuggled into the country last week, Malacañang said Monday.
“Buo ang paniniwala at tiwala pa rin ni Presidente kay General Lapeña at ang nais niyang mangyari is paano masusugpo ito at matigil na itong practice na ito, at hahabulin pa rin natin yung kung ano man yung nakapasok kung meron nang nakapasok,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a Palace briefing.
(The President has complete belief and trust in General Lapeña and what he wants to know is how to resolve and stop this practice. We will go after whatever was smuggled into the country.)
Roque said the government has been investigating the shabu shipment that slipped past the BOC.
“It’s ongoing and of course the President has given this investigation priority,” he said.
“He (Duterte) wants to know the bottom, who’s behind the importation and of course he’s raring to apply the full force of the law against those behind the importations,” he added.
The Palace official said the smuggled drugs “clearly shows that the problem has an international aspect because these are imports from other countries.”
He said the President wanted the syndicate behind the smuggled drugs arrested.
“Siyempre ang iniisip niya, kailangang mahuli na talaga kung sino itong mga nagpapadala ng mga droga na ito, kung kinakailangan magkaroon ng kaugnayan with different sovereign states to apprehend them, so be it,” Roque said.
(He thinks that those behind sending drugs in the country should be arrested. If there is a need to have coordination with different sovereign states to apprehend them, so be it.)
On Friday, members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) discovered that a ton of shabu was smuggled into the country after they found four magnetic lifters with traces of the illegal drug in a warehouse in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite.
READ: P6.8-B ‘shabu’ smuggling: BOC men probed
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