SAN PEDRO CITY — Anti-narcotics agents swooped down on another suspected illegal drugs warehouse, just days after it recovered billions-worth of drugs from two Chinese nationals in Cavite province.
The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has in its custody Alexander Jun Wah Ting, 40, and Patrick Bankee, 44, both Filipino-Chinese, who were arrested in an operation in Quezon City on Wednesday morning.
By late afternoon on the same day, authorities raided the “shabu” (crystal meth) warehouse, an apartment rented by the suspects in Barangay (village) Paliparan, Dasmariñas City, Cavite.
“(Wah Ting) stayed in the house. We even recovered (identification cards) with his pictures but a different name, like ‘Norman Tan,’” said PDEA regional chief Adrian Alvariño, in a phone interview on Thursday.
PDEA agents and the Cavite police recovered six kilos of suspected shabu, worth P244,800,000 from the house.
During the Quezon City operation, PDEA agents recovered two kilos of alleged shabu worth P13.6 million from Wah Ting.
PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino said in a statement that Wah Ting had been under surveillance for months.
“He (was) supplying the vehicles for (the delivery of the) illegal drugs to Vincent Lim Du, who was killed in Tanza, Cavite,” Aquino said.
Du and another Chinese national Hong Li Wen were killed in a buy-bust operation on Feb. 3 in Tanza town, about 36 kilometers from Dasmariñas City.
Authorities recovered about P1.9 billion worth of manufactured drugs from the Tanza warehouse.
“We believe they’re members of the Golden Triangle,” Alvariño said, referring to a drug smuggling syndicate based in the border of Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar.
He said the drug supply was meant for distribution across the Philippines.
Alvariño said the PDEA runs a different “investigation” between this group and those behind the shabu shipment concealed in magnetic lifters that were later found in Gen. Mariano Alvarez town in Cavite last year./lzb