Sibling of 2 controversial Cebu traders linked to seized cargo

CEBU CITY — Controversy just cannot seem to let go of the controversial Lim brothers here.

First it was Peter and Wellington Lim who got implicated in alleged illegal drug trafficking.

Now a third brother, David, has found himself implicated as the alleged consignee of a shipment of rice from Thailand seized by the Bureau of Customs.

Peter and Wellington had denied any involvement in illegal drugs and were subsequently cleared when their accuser, Rep. Antonio Cuenco, said he had no evidence against them.

Now, David is also denying ownership of the seized rice.

The BoC seized the cargo ship Morning Princess and its load of 30,000 bags of Thai rice the other day due to suspicious circumstances on its arrival.

Cebu Customs collector Juan Tan issued the seizure order when documents obtained from Thailand’s Customs service showed that the rice shipment was consigned to a certain DGL Trucks Indonesia, which turned out to be non-existent.

Further verification by Customs intelligence officers, however, showed there is a Cebu company named DGL Trucks Inc., owned by David Lim. Tan’s seizure order was addressed to this firm.

David denied ownership of the shipment nor any involvement with the ship. He instead suggested that he might just be a victim of unscrupulous businessmen who used his company to hide their true identities.

David insisted that he is in the trucking business and has never ventured into rice trading.

Simplicio Jorgio, a former Customs lawyer who now represents the shipowner, said his client will be producing documents to prove that everything about the ship and its cargo is legal.

The Morning Princess was ostensibly on its way to Indonesia and was in the Balabac Strait, between the southern tip of Palawan and Borneo, when it allegedly encountered difficulties and sought permission for emergency drydocking services in Cebu.

Except for the fact that the ship’s operator and the drydocking facility are sister-companies, it remains unclear why a ship in distress so far away needed to have emergency repairs in Cebu.

Halleck Valdez, Customs intelligence chief, said a report submitted by a unit of the Philippine Navy’s Special Warfare Action Group (SWAG) which inspected the Morning Princess, suggested there nothing wrong with the ship.

Valdez said that while the SWAG unit detected weaknesses in the hull of the ship, they were not enough for the ship to report that it was in distress. — Freeman News Service