DOJ execs, church group linked to prison drugs

AT LEAST two former high-ranking officials of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and officials of the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) allegedly received millions of pesos from some high-profile inmates in exchange for special treatment, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre said yesterday.

Aguirre also revealed that a religious group whom he refused to identify was acting as a conduit of illegal drugs and prostitution inside the prison facility.

Aside from accepting bribes, Aguirre said the government officials also manipulated the budget at the NBP.

He cited as example the daily meal allowance for the inmates which was brought down to P40 from the previous budget of P50 so the P240,000 “savings” per day could be pocketed by the officials.

“It has really reached as high up as the DOJ. I don’t want to name names, but we are going to come up with the results of the investigation. You’ve seen how lenient they have been with the high-profile inmates. It seems like they are the bosses there, they are the ones directing the affairs,” Aguirre said at a press conference yesterday.

Aguirre hinted that the DOJ official was from the previous administration. But Aguirre refused to mention how high the positions of the suspected former officials involved were.

“I do not want to name names [because] that would be unfair to them. But we are going to come out with the results of the ongoing investigation,” Aguirre said.

On the involvement of a religious group, Aguirre said the group has a chapel inside the prison.

“Apparently, this is a bona fide religious group,” Aguirre said,  adding that the group brought in four to five women who turned out to be prostitutes.

Aguirre said a nongovernment organization (NGO) and three prison guards informed him of the religious group’s suspicious activities.

Following such information, Aguirre said religious activities were temporarily  banned inside the NBP.

He said the ban on religious groups doing outreach work inside the prison facility would be lifted once the situation normalizes.

Aguirre, however, cleared former Bureau of Corrections Director General Rainier Cruz of any wrongdoing. He said he had received derogatory reports about BuCor and NBP officials except for Cruz.

Aguirre said Cruz did his best but was not able to solve the problem.

Prior to the takeover of the elite Special Action Force (SAF), Aguirre said the high-profile inmates had been running the prison facility.

“The officials are afraid of these inmates,” Aguirre said,  adding that there were incidents in the past where officials were liquidated for defying the high-profile inmates.

Aguirre said they would create a fact-finding team to investigate the involvement of former DOJ and NBP officials in the anomalies inside the prison.

The investigation will be different from the probe being conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation and the Philippine National Police.

“I’ll be creating a fact-finding committee kung kinakailangan, this would assist the other investigating bodies. I believe that the police, the NBI are already conducting their own investigation dito,” he said.

Last week, SAF took over the NBP and conducted daily raids to rid the prison facility of contrabands and stop convicts from continuing their illegal activities.

Aguirre, as well as  PNP Director General Roland dela Rosa earlier said that 75-percent illegal drug transactions nationwide originated from the NBP.

Based on the report from SAF, in Building 14 alone, they have confiscated a total of P576,370 cash, “shabu,” several drug paraphernalia, 22 units of mobile phones, 34 units of mobile phone chargers, three pieces of SIM cards, four pieces of 4G pocket Wi-Fi, seven pieces of headsets/earphones, one piece flash drive, one kitchen knife, two rolls of transmission wires, one piece each of booster antenna, a hammer, and one bundle of cockfighting blades.

Building 14 was supposed to be the highly secure area inside NBP. It is within the Maximum Security Compound. Its gate, however, is not accessible via the heavily guarded main entrance of the national penitentiary. Its inmates can no longer mingle with the other inmates because its only gate is along the NBP main road leading to the Reception and Diagnostic Center and near the BuCor Museum, formerly the lethal injection chamber.

It has 29 cells measuring eight square meters each. The building is equipped with closed-circuit television cameras, signal jammers and own sets of guards.

The building used to be a death chamber for convicts scheduled to die by electric chair. A total of 84 inmates were executed in the building. The last execution took place Oct. 21, 1976.

During the ’80s, it was turned into a disciplinary area for high-risk inmates.

The DOJ, during the time of now Sen. Leila de Lima pushed for its renovation in the wake of the raid in 2014 where authorities seized illegal drugs, firearms, cellular phones and other communications gear, cash of different denominations and expensive appliances.

It originally housed 19 high-profile inmates, including Herbert “Ampang” Colangco and Peter Co. Now, Aguirre said 54 inmates are occupying the facility.