NBI: Peter Lim willing to submit to investigation

Cebu-based businessman Peter Lim appeared before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Thursday to prove he is not the “Peter Lim” being referred to by President Rodrigo Duterte as a “drug lord.”

NBI spokesperson Ferdinand Lavin said Lim also submitted a letter to Director Dante Gierran.

“The letter stated his willingness to submit to the investigation,” Lavin said, refusing to give specifics on the letters’ contents.

The businessman met with NBI National Capital Region Assistant Regional Director Juan Roel Bolivar, who also heads the national task force against illegal drugs, and antidrugs division chief Joel Tovera.

Lim, according to President Duterte, is part of a drug triad along with Peter Co or Wu Tuan and Herbert “Ampang” Colangco.

Lavin said Lim had admitted that in 2006, he appeared in Congress during the investigation by the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs.

But in that investigation, the House committee recommended that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and NBI do a fact-finding investigation to establish Lim and his brother Wellington’s link to the illegal drugs trade.

“He (submitting) himself for clarificatory questioning is already a gesture of cooperation,” Lavin said.

He said the NBI had required Lim to submit some documents.

Lim’s lawyer Ramon Esguerra refused to divulge the documents being referred to by the NBI.

“Because of the confidentiality of what was taken up, we are not at liberty [to give details],” Esguerra told reporters.

“We brought him here based on his own decision pursuant to the instruction of the President to have himself investigated by the bureau,” Esguerra added.

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