Sunken ship linked to cocaine find

Chief Supt. Antonio Gardiola Jr., Bicol regional police director (second from right), inspects packs of cocaine that washed ashore at Matnog town in Sorsogon province. —MICHAEL B. JAUCIAN

LEGAZPI CITY—Police and antinarcotics officials are looking into a foreign vessel, which sank off Northern Samar province on Jan. 2, as a possible source of the 24 kilograms of cocaine washed ashore at Matnog town in Sorsogon province on Wednesday.

Chief Supt. Antonio Gardiola Jr., Bicol regional police director, on Friday said there was a possibility that crew members of MV Jin Ming No. 16 dumped the contraband in the sea as the vessel sailed through Philippine waters while Tropical Depression “Agaton” was crossing the Visayas.

Initial reports said MV Jin Ming No. 16, which sank off Pambujan town in Northern Samar, was Chinese-registered but officials of the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Bicol said it was an undocumented vessel that Taiwanese authorities had been monitoring.

“The ship could have been loaded with contraband so there was no documentation. In this particular case, we suspect that the ship was carrying cocaine,” Gardiola said.

On Wednesday, Matnog resident Robert Galvez reported to the police that he found a plastic container filled with 25 packs of white powder at the shore of Juag Lagoon in Barangay Calintaan.

Search

Each pack weighs about a kilogram and worth about P5 million, with a total estimated amount of P125 million.

According to Gardiola, the Bicol police are coordinating with officials in Northern Samar, where the foreign vessel’s crew members—six Chinese, two Hong Kong nationals and a Taiwanese—are held.

“We are now in the process of conducting legal search on the vessel,” he said.

MV Jin Ming No. 16 sank about 300 meters from the shoreline at Barangay Poblacion 2 in Pambujan, Northern Samar, after it was battered by strong winds and waves.

The vessel had tilted, leaving only its second deck visible as seawater entered through its damaged hull.

The crew sent a distress call, prompting the local police and disaster response teams to rescue them.

Initial reports said the crew members told police that they left China on Dec. 12 and were heading to Chile when the storm hit Philippine waters.

Senior Supt. Felix Diloy, Northern Samar police director, said the search on the vessel had been hampered by bad weather.

He said the crew members were taken to the Eastern Visayas regional police headquarters in Palo town in Leyte province for “documentation purposes.”

Pambujan Mayor Felipe Sosing said representatives from the Bureau of Immigration had visited the foreigners and interviewed them.

“Accordingly, if ever there will be illegal drugs that will be discovered [in the ship], then its custody will be with the PDEA. And if it will involve illegal fishing, then it’s BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources),” he said.

Watchlist

The vessel, reports said, contained 1,700 boxes of liquor and empty fish crates.

Christian Frivaldo, PDEA chief in Bicol, said the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (Teco) in the Philippines informed authorities that the vessel was under its watchlist for illegal activities using nautical routes in the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines.

“At the moment, we are looking at the possibility that [this] vessel is responsible for the dumping of the recovered cocaine. [This is] based on a Teco report that the ship was involved in illegal activities, considering that it was not detected by our naval authorities [after it] intentionally [turned] off its positioning system,” Frivaldo said.

“No local contacts of this ship was established or identified as of the moment,” he added.

Frivaldo said the cocaine found in Sorsogon was imported.

“There are no raw ingredients [in the Philippines]. Based on the physical indicators, it originated from Latin America, but we are still conducting an in-depth investigation,” he added.

The PDEA, Frivaldo said, had coordinated with the Philippine Navy and Philippine Air Force to search the waters and coastlines of Sorsogon and Northern Samar for remnants of the drug shipment.

“We are urging the public to surrender to authorities similar containers of cocaine that might be washed ashore in Sorsogon and Samar,” he said. —WITH REPORTS FROM MAR S. ARGUELLES, JUAN ESCANDOR JR. AND JOEY A. GABIETA