Lapeña: Shabu seized in recent ops can’t be linked to Cavite lifters

Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña on Saturday disputed claims by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) that the illegal drugs seized during recent operations in Metro Manila were from the magnetic lifters found in Cavite after tests found that the pieces of shabu apprehended matched those intercepted at the Manila International Container Port (MICP).

“The test conducted by PDEA then does not substantiate the PDEA’s claim that their recent shabu seizures are from those empty lifters found in Cavite since their basis is the MICP shabu substance which came from a different source," Lapeña said in a statement.

This came after PDEA Director General  Aaron Aquino claimed that the glut of shabu in the National Capital Region and the results of recent operations in Manila support the PDEA's claim that P6.8 billion worth of shabu made it into the market after being contained in magnetic lifters later found in General Mariano Alvarez in Cavite.

In a separate statement, Aquino said that chromatographic impurity profiles and cluster analysis between samples from the intercepted shipment in MICP and bulk shabu seizures from recent entrapment operations conducted by PDEA in Sitio Tenorio, Barangay Awang DOS, Maguindanao on July 19, 2018; along Congressional Avenue, Barangay Toro, Quezon City on August 1, 2018; along Ronquillo Street, Sta. Cruz, Manila on August 26, 2018, and in Alabang Town Center, Muntinlupa on October 1, 2018, show that they are of high similarity, indicating strong correlation among them.

The PDEA chief said this supports the agency's claim that the shabu inside the magnetic lifters in Cavite have already found their way into the streets, as evidenced by the correlation patterns established by the impurity profiling analysis.

"These scientific findings support the claims of Aquino that shabu is flooding the streets as further indicated by the sudden drop in the price per gram of shabu now at P1,400 per gram from P6,800 per gram in July, 2018," Aquino said.

For Lapeña, however, it is wrong to correlate those found at the MICP, Cavite, and the seized shabu in recent drug operations.

“Assuming that there are indeed indications of similarity between the intercepted drugs at the MICP and the confiscated illegal drugs in some operations, I would like to point out...that the intercepted and confiscated 355 kilos of shabu at the MICP was the result of joint operations of BOC and PDEA, to which the PDEA compared the samples they obtained from their operation;

"That the same illegal drugs were manufactured by an international drug syndicate which has been dumping illegal drugs in the country in the past years through a corrupt system which we now fearlessly fighting head-on;

"That the scientific analysis made by the PDEA did not categorically answer the question on whether or not the four magnetic lifters indeed contain shabu. In fact, the basis of the comparison is from the more than 300 kilos of shabu which the BOC confiscated at the MICP," he said.

To recall, on August 17, combined operatives of PDEA, the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) intercepted 154 pieces of foil-wrapped sealed plastic packs containing 355.8506 kilos of shabu concealed inside two magnetic lifters at the MICP.

Two days later, four more magnetic lifters were discovered abandoned by PDEA in a warehouse in GMA, Cavite, but upon inspection, the metal containers were found empty. 

Despite yielding negative results from swab testing, PDEA’s drug-sniffing dogs have responded positively in detecting traces of the illegal drug inside the lifters.

“Let me then emphasize that the shabu contained in lifters intercepted by the BOC at the MICP, consigned to Vecaba Trading, came from Malaysia, while the lifters consigned to SMYD Trading discovered in Cavite and which were found empty, came from Vietnam," Lapeña said. — Ted Cordero/MDM, GMA News