More pirated aluminum ingots found in RP - NBI

The missing 3,000-ton cargoes of aluminum ingots, which the pirates removed from the hijacked Japanese ship Alondra Rainbow in October, have all been shipped to the Philippines via Subic Freeport.

But in spite of a recent seizure of the portion of some 214 tons of aluminum ingots in a Pasig City warehouse, the National Bureau of Investigation has yet unable to file charges of violation of Article 122 or piracy on the high seas against the possible suspects.

The Japanese insurers of the cargo through their Filipino counsels are pressing the NBI to file appropriate charges and protect the cargo, valued at $3M believed to be stashed in other warehouses.

An agent assigned on the case said that charges of violation of Customs Code or smuggling would instead be filed next week.

Records showed that the suspects succeeded in facilitating the release of all the cargoes by faking all shipping documents and enabling them to evade proper customs duties. It took 15 lorries to transport the entire cargoes from Subic to their intended warehouses.

Declared as "aluminum bars," the customs broker of the shipments only paid the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) P5.1 million instead of the required amount of P21 million. The purported bill of lading showed Sulaiman (HK) Enterprises of Sarawak, Malaysia as the shipper of the missing aluminum ingots.

Dual 7, the customs brokerage whose president is reportedly the son of a high ranking government official, facilitated the release of the cargoes upon the request of another customs broker who was not then accredited by SBMA.

The aluminum ingots were then sold to George So, the Canadian-Chinese businessman whose warehouse a Hanson Paper Mills in Pasig City yielded 214 tons of aluminum ingots, which form part of the shipment, during a raid conducted by the NBI last March.

Shipping sources said the buyer should have realized that the absence of a certificate of origin and original bill of lading especially in such quantity proved that the products were "highly questionable, if not obviously contraband."

From the pirated Alondra Rainbow the cargoes were transhipped to mv Bonsoon 2, which unloaded the cargoes at Subic Freeport.

However, the suspects used other ship called mv Victoria in the release of the cargo. They even filed a "motion to quash" in court when investigators obtained a search warrant, saying that the shipment was bought "in good faith."

The cargo, which arrived in Subic less than a month after the October 22 hijacking of the Alondra Rainbow, also proved to have its apparent recipient for their intended disposals even before execution of the piratical attack on the 8,913 Alondra Rainbow, indicating certainly in the network of the highly organized crime.

The 3,000 tons of aluminum ingots were part of the original 7,000 tons carried by the bulker when the ship was pirated in Kuala Tanjung in Sarawak, Malaysia.

The crew of 15 Filipinos and two Japanese officers were held captive and later cast adrift in the Andanan Sea, and the vessel was eventually recaptured after a dramatic high seas chase off the coast of India in November last year.

The distinctive ingots bear the mark INAL, denoting their manufacturer by Indonesia Asaham Adluminum, weigh 50 lbs. each and measure 20 cm. by 81 cm. by 9.5 cm.