2 PNP officials tagged in P6.7 billion shabu cover-up

MANILA, Philippines — Two lieutenant colonels have “a lot of explaining to do” after they were tagged by relieved Philippine National Police Drug Enforcement Group (PDEG) chief Brig. Gen. Narciso Domingo as among the main players in the alleged cover-up surrounding the seizure of 990 kilos of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu.

Domingo identified Lt. Cols. Glenn Gonzales of the Quezon City Police District and Arnulfo Ibañez, then officer-in-charge of the PDEG Special Operations Unit-National Capital Region, in the attempted cover-up to exonerate former police officer Rodolfo Mayo over the raid on Mayo’s lending firm in Manila last year that resulted in the discovery of shabu valued at P6.7 billion.

“If you want to know who is behind the drug syndicate at the (PNP), you should look at the boss of Gonzales and Ibañez,” Domingo told former PNP chief and now Sen. Ronald dela Rosa during the latter’s committee hearing yesterday on the drug pilferage.

Lapses

During his opening statement, Domingo said he would “present everything I know on (the) 990 case,” referring to what authorities consider as the country’s largest confiscation of shabu.

He admitted lapses in the police operation against Mayo and his accomplice Ney Saligumba Atadero, notably the absence of a drug inventory upon their arrest due to a plan to use Mayo in a follow-up operation to find his source of drugs.

“I admit there are lapses in our entire operation, but such judgment calls and procedural lapses were done by me in good faith based on the reports of my men,” Domingo said.

He pointed to Ibañez as Mayo’s superior and the one who signed a spot report that included Mayo as an arresting officer in a separate drug bust so that the latter could lead operatives to another alleged drug warehouse.

But former PNP chief Rodolfo Azurin later canceled the plan to use Mayo in the follow-up operation and ordered the filing of charges against him instead, Domingo said.

Azurin had Mayo secured instead “supposedly because Ibañez might clean up his mess and kill Mayo.”

As for Gonzales, he intervened in the operation despite being assigned to the Quezon City police and arrived at the crime scene supposedly to get a “reward” for his informant, who allegedly tipped off police, according to Domingo.

“Ibañez and Gonzales have a lot of explaining to do,” Dela Rosa later said of the two in a press briefing after the hearing. “Questions surrounding this shabu haul revolve around the two, aside from Mayo.”

During the hearing, Dela Rosa also called on police to launch a manhunt against a suspected drug “bodegero” named Mike Sy, who was supposed to testify in the hearing but later backed out because he was “prevailed upon” by his supposed “handler,” a police officer.

Sy is allegedly a “bodegero” of a drug lord detained at the Sablayan prison and penal farm in Occidental Mindoro, Dela Rosa said.

Sy may be a “source of shabu” in Mayo’s drug dealings, Dela Rosa added.