Customs intel officer Jimmy Guban gets witness protection

MANILA, Philippines — Customs intelligence officer Jimmy Guban, a key witness in a multibillion-peso shabu smuggling controversy, was turned over yesterday afternoon to the Department of Justice (DOJ) after almost eight weeks in Senate custody.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III said Senate sergeant-at-arms Jose Balajadia informed him that Guban was taken to the DOJ at around 12:20 p.m. by personnel led by Witness Protection Program (WPP) operations chief Benito Talabucon.

He added that Balajadia has the documents of the turnover of Guban, former officer-in-charge of Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service at the Port of Manila, and a receiving copy by Talabucon.

A picture taken by dzBB from a Senate security camera showed Guban wearing a bullet-proof vest and escorted by several similarly garbed men in civilian clothes.

Guban, considered a key witness in the shabu smuggling controversy at the Bureau of Customs (BOC), tagged dismissed police Senior Supt. Eduardo Acierto as the one who tipped him off about the arrival of the drug shipment from Malaysia and sought his help to bring it in. He claimed having told Acierto that he could not do it as it involved drugs.

Based on his testimonies, Acierto supposedly agreed to help authorities recover the drugs, but at the same time still sought Guban’s help to facilitate the entry of another shipment of magnetic lifters that the former BOC intelligence officer claimed he did not know contained shabu.

The magnetic lifters, reportedly emptied of hundreds of kilos of shabu, were recovered by members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Cavite in August.

Because of his inconsistent statements about the shipment, Guban was held in contempt and ordered detained at the Senate during the investigation by the Blue Ribbon committee chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon.

The committee later withdrew the contempt charges and had Guban placed under “protective custody” of the chamber.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra confirmed that Guban was placed under WPP coverage.

“His admission to the WPP and the actual turnover are two different things. I can confirm his admission to the program, but I cannot confirm when his physical transfer is,” he explained, citing the strict confidentiality policy under the WPP law.

“We cannot reveal to the media his whereabouts because that’s top secret. What we can only assure you is that he will be protected until he testifies in court and threats to his personal safety have become manageable,” Guevarra added.

Guban was placed under WPP upon the request of Gordon after he spilled the beans on the P11-billion shabu shipment that slipped past the BOC during the Senate inquiry.

The case has prompted President Duterte to appoint former Armed Forces chief Rey Guerrero to head Customs.

The National Bureau of Investigation is conducting a parallel probe on the shabu shipment following contrasting findings by the BOC and PDEA. – With Paolo Romero, Edu Punay