Former Marine officials convicted of firearms smuggling modus

Two Marine officials and four others were sentenced to six years in prison over a modus operandi of purchasing firearms for the police and military which ended up being smuggled in Subic, Zambales.

In a resolution by the Sandiganbayan special Fifth Division, the court found the following guilty beyond reasonable doubt of illegal disposition of firearms: Col. Cesar Dela Pena and Brigadier General Percival Subala; Manuel Ferdinand Trinidad and Michael Boregas of Tri-Mark Ventures Corp.; and gun dealers Edelbert Uybuco and Gerardo Vijandre.

They were found guilty of the crime of illegal disposition of firearms under Section 1 of the Presidential Decree No. 1866.

According to the court, the officials and dealers were part of a “modus operandi” in the police and military which purchased and licensed high-powered firearms, but smuggled them to private entities, skirting around the prohibition on the licensing of high-powered firearms for civilians.

According to the information, Dela Pena sought authority from the Philippine National Police (PNP) Firearms and Explosives Division (FED) in Feb. 2000 to purchase on behalf of the Philippine Marine Corps. at least 72 units of Heckler and Koch MP5 A5E submachine guns from the distributor Tri-Mark Ventures Corp.

These high-powered firearms were supposedly donated to the Marines to intensify its urban operations.

Dela Pena also filed an application for firearm license on behalf of the Marines, and submitted the documents to transfer the firearms from FED to the Marines.

Dela Pena authorized co-accused Boregas, a warehouse man of Tri-Mark, to license the 72 units of firearms. This paved the way for the release of the firearms from the FED in June 2000.

Four months after, or on Oct. 2000, the PNP seized 96 firearms from two Taiwanese nationals and nine Filipinos at Lap-laya Delsol, Barangay Kawa, Subic, Zambales.

Five of the firearms seized bore the same serial numbers from among the 72 firearms licensed by the FED and transported to the Marines, according to an investigation by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.

It turns out that the Marines did not receive any Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine guns, according to a certification by the Philippine Navy.

Defendants

According to the information, Dela Pena was offered the weapons by Tri-Mark president and owner Trinidad.

Trinidad said he only donated the firearms to Dela Pena because the original buyer, the PNP National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), ran out of funds.

Trinidad said the firearms were offered as a donation with a benefactor to fund the payment for the use of the Marines.

Dela Pena asked for an undated purchase order from the Marines even though the Marines did not have the budget to acquire the firearms.

In his defense, Dela Pena said the purchase order served as an attachment to a letter sent to the benefactors.

Dela Pena said he did not find the need to ask Trinidad who these benefactors are because of the compelling need to use these high-powered firearms in the aftermath of a bombing in the LRT.

But the court said no contract of sale or donation was executed between Trinidad and Dela Pena.

It was also Trinidad’s employee Boregas who acted on behalf of Dela Pena in securing the license of the firearms.

The court found no merit in Trinidad’s defense that he had thought all along that the firearms were delivered to the Marines after calling up Dela Pena, who told him the Marines had received the firearms.

It was also “against the ordinary course of business” for Trinidad not to follow up the payment of firearms after its delivery.

Meanwhile, the court found it unreasonable that Dela Pena did not even “lift a finger to recover said firearms or even investigate the matter.”

The court found no merit in Dela Pena’s defense that he did not find the time to investigate because he was in Mindanao that time.

“It goes against ordinary human conduct and experience for a leader to sit back and keep silent while powerful and dangerous weapons go missing under his watch,” the court said.

The court said Dela Pena’s “silence and inaction, coupled by his earlier acts of signing documents for the licensing of subject firearms,” indicates his “participation in having the firearms released from the FED into the hands and possession of Tri-Mark.”

The court also found no merit in Dela Pena’s claim that he signed the documents only upon Trinidad’s instruction, saying Dela Pena is unlikely to be “duped” because he is a highly-educated military official.

Smuggling modus

The court gave the larger picture of the “modus operandi” within the PNP – the “irregular practice” of gun dealers in importing high-powered firearms but selling them commercially instead after the original buyer discontinues the purchase.

In this modus operandi, the high powered firearms are licensed, thus skirting around the prohibition on licensed high-powered firearms for civilians.

“The court takes judicial notice…. on the irregular practice of gun dealers in importing military hardware like high-powered firearms for the AFP or the PNP but selling these instead commercially after the original end-user changes its mind and discontinues with the purchase. Since licensing of high-powered firearms to civilians through purchase from dealers is not allowed, the only way for dealers to remove these high-powered firearms from the FED storage is if they could show that the new end-user would still be the PNP or AFP,” the court said.

“The facts of the instant case uncannily echo the modus operandi above described… The firearms were released but were not transported or received by the Marines but mysteriously disappeared until some were recovered in the hands of civilians who were not entitled to the possession of said high-powered firearms,” the court added.

Subala, the commandant of the Philippine Marine Corps. was convicted because he approved the purchase order which paved the way for the illegal licensing of the firearms.

Gun dealers Uybuco and Vijandre were convicted for their role in transporting the firearms from the FED storage facility to the Tri-Mark’s office instead of to the Marines headquarters.

Meanwhile, the court issued an arrest warrant against SPO4 Richard Zules, who is at large. He was the official escort of the gun dealers in transporting the firearms to Tri-Mark’s.

They were sentenced to four to six years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of P30,000 each.

Meanwhile, the court acquitted the Marines procurement officer Capt. Teodoro Briones because evidence showed that he only prepared the purchase order upon the instruction of Dela Pena, who was his superior.

The court also found no evidence that Briones knew that the purchase order was for the illegal licensing of the firearms. Briones also supposedly told Dela Pena that he could not sign the order for lack of public bidding and budget, but Dela Pena assured him that it has been taken care of by the commandant Subala.