Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had heard such stories when she was Vice President and member of the Estrada cabinet. But they were just stories – hard to believe since the unit is from the elite Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force. But when she received confirmatory reports this month from her own PAOCTF appointees about the task force’s old shenanigans, GMA quickly ordered it disbanded. Initially disappointed, GMA’s officers later realized the urgency of her decision: the PAOCTF, set up to smash crime syndicates and hailed for its exploits, had itself organized criminal rackets. When reassigned to a new task force to nip a wave of kidnappings, the appointees in fact discovered they were up against a gang linked to four former PAOCTF handlers. The gang that operates in Manila, Cebu and Davao is well-entrenched in Mindanao’s western half. It has so corrupted certain pols in Misamis, Zamboanga and Lanao provinces that it’s capable of election dagdag-bawas with five million voters.
AFP and PNP intelligence have yet to declassify the sordid details. But reports sent to Malacañang and law agencies show that a high officer of PAOCTF had formed one of eight Manila syndicates of the Hong Kong triads. Lawmen classify the syndicates as Level 1, that is, able to import or manufacture at least 20 kilos of shabu at any one time. Street value: P150-P200 million per kilo. Four of them had long been unmasked as led by the slippery Benny Cheng, Erlinda Figueroa, Wong Kam Chong and Zeng Jia Xuan. One is lying low for a while, its boss having been arrested and tried, though eventually acquitted. Another is led by a big-time gambler who fled RP in December. The seventh operates from Zamboanga. The gang led by the one-time PAOCTF officer is organized down to Levels 2 to 6, from wholesalers to top-, mid- and low-level distributors and to street pushers.
The PAOCTF officer’s gang smuggles in the stuff via the usual shore dropoffs, airline cleaning crew, or friendly yet unsuspecting brokerage. But it has a cover that the rival syndicates have to pay for: the uniform. It was through this commodity – which comes not only with badge and gun but, more important, access to the innermost circles of high government – that the gang was able to grow from penny-ante operations. As the officer rose up the ranks, he cultivated loyal subordinates who perfected operations like the tira-pasok, or robbing drug lords with weak political connections in the course of warrantless raids. Other subs were masters of "sell-bust," in which they’d buy a load of shabu from a drug lord, then sell to the latter’s long-surveilled contacts. They’d arrest the buyers, take their money and retake the stuff until the unsuspecting drug lord’s contacts are all gone. Then they’d dispose of the stuff in the streets for more profit. Sometimes they’d arrest a drug lord just to squeeze out a bribe. Congress consequently reclassified this estafa as qualified bribery, a heinous crime for which the sentence is what the released criminal should have served. Still other hood officers would kidnap Level 2 drug lords or their immediate relatives for ransom. It was from this operation that they branched out to kidnapping rich Chinese by employing the now resurgent gang from Mindanao. They even "salvaged" splinters of this gang years ago.
Reports shown to GMA reveal a pattern in which several key officers of PAOCTF used their uniforms as cover for a variety of criminal rackets – and covered for each other. One specialized in trading stolen vehicles from Europe. Another would help ship the cars to China or Sabah through the same drug triads. A parallel racket is human smuggling in Manila and Cebu. One officer has so mastered it that he also sells special investors residence visas. Still another racket is large-scale real estate fraud, in which three PAOCTF officers broker the transfer of huge tracts of land from unsuspecting ethnic tribes to rich pals, through contacts at the Land Registration Authority.
At the bottom of the varied crime operations is a money-laundering arm. Through frontmen, select PAOCTF officers ran legitimate businesses like car importation from US and Japan, investment in condos and prime real estate, and a burger restaurant in Alabang. One officer’s loot is stashed in five US banks. While illegally transporting $7 million from Canada, that officer, along with American and Taiwanese cohorts, was accosted by New York authorities in 1998. Justice officials have requested the FBI to reopen and share its findings with them.
The disbanded officers are not exactly on the run. While three are in hiding for the kidnap-murder of famous publicist Bubby Dacer, the rest are busy securing their futures through politics. They not only are funding the reelection campaigns of congressional friends but also preparing dagdag-bawas for potential political protectors. It was this info from six Mindanao provinces that convinced GMA about the exigency of crushing the crime syndicates linked to ex-PAOCTF officers. Word from Camp Aguinaldo is that GMA will soon tap key military officers to lead the fight.