Two pairs of unclaimed men’s shoes in the lost-and-found section of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) Terminal 1 yielded a startling discovery: two kilos of heroin valued at P10 million.
The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) said on Wednesday that the drugs were found by the section’s personnel on Monday as they were sorting the items that had gone unclaimed at the airport warehouse.
According to airport authorities, the staff became suspicious of a black pair of Clark Active Air shoes that was found to be “suspiciously heavy.” When they cut it open, they found 1,000 grams of a “yellow powder-like substance” inside the soles—500 grams in each one.
The MIAA said another 1,000 grams of the same substance were found inside another pair of the same brand of shoes, this time brown in color.
It added that in both instances, the drugs were carefully wrapped inside a “dark plastic material shaped like the bottom of the shoe.”
“These were placed inside the soles of the shoes which were then sewn carefully back [on],” the MIAA said.
The shoes were turned over to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) which confirmed that their soles contained heroin. A kilo of the drug has a street value of P5 million.
The MIAA said an investigation was ongoing to determine when and where the shoes were found and who turned them over to the lost-and-found section.
“The airport authority is one with the PDEA in preventing the spread of illegal substances,” MIAA general manager Jose Angel Honrado said as he assured the public that “stringent measures” were in place to “check all items and baggage entering the terminals.”