Magnetic lifters contained 1.6 tons of shabu – PDEA

About 1,600 kilos of shabu, not only 700 kilos as earlier estimated, were smuggled in four magnetic lifters that narcs interdicted in Cavite recently. That flood of meth is the reason street prices suddenly dropped. Pushers are being caught with bigger volumes than before of the illegal drug.

Equivalent to 1,600,000 sachets of one gram each, that immensity of shabu can addle the brain of 1.6 million addicts. Junkies can consume a sachet of shabu in three to seven snort sessions, or “batak” in their lingo.

Recalculation was arrived at by weighing the emptied metal lifters against the declared import mass, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency director general Aaron Aquino says. “We reenacted everything, carefully weighing the truck, cargo container, and four lifters, to verify the gross and net weights stated in the bill of lading. There was a discrepancy of 1.6 tons, or 1,600 kilos. That was the volume of shabu concealed in the lifters.”

The contraband quickly was unleashed onto the drug market, Aquino says. Following the law of supply and demand, street prices in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces dropped, from P6,000-P8,000 per gram to only P1,600-P2,000. Going by daily news, police raids and buy-busts began to nab from mere street pushers half-kilo to three-kilo bags of shabu, from the usual few sachets. “There was a sudden deluge of shabu ... compared to prices that remained higher in the Visayas and Mindanao,” Aquino says.

Made of steel, the giant electromagnetic lifters are circular, with a hollow compartment in which the shabu was hidden. On Aug. 7, on a supposed tip from PDEA, Customs at the Manila International Container Port intercepted 355 kilos of shabu stashed in two such lifters. Valued at P3.4 billion, the meth had come from Malaysia, via Hong Kong. Seeing it on TV news, a warehouseman in Gen. Mariano Alvarez, Cavite, alerted PDEA about four similar lifters, from which the Chinese lessors had extracted contents. That other shipment came from Vietnam. PDEA raided the Cavite warehouse on Aug. 9.

A Senate inquiry in Sept. showed that the Aug. 7 “discovery” of shabu inside the two lifters was a “moro-moro” (sham), Aquino says. “It was a decoy, part of the modus operandi of narco-syndicates, to make us focus attention on the supposed big catch, but actually distracting us from the bigger shipment. Both shipments, one with two lifters and the other with four lifters, were by one and the same narco-syndicate.”

Customs intelligence officials, a retired police colonel, and a PDEA deputy had colluded with the drug smugglers, claimed that they had built up the cases, and simulated the bust, Aquino says. He has suspended the PDEA man for investigation. President Duterte identified the trio in a recent drug matrix.

The Cavite seizure of the four lifters sparked controversy. A swab test showed the insides negative of shabu, on which basis Customs top brass claimed that nothing got past them. But PDEA’s best sniffer dog twice detected drugs per lifter, making Aquino remark, “Dogs don’t lie, they don’t take bribes.” Customs officer Atty. Lourdes V. Mangaoang, who had headed the container x-ray unit for five years, noted on review of the scans that there was contraband inside the four lifters. Yet, in breach of standard procedure, the x-ray operator did not call for a physical inspection. That would have uncovered the illegal contents, Mangaoang testified at the Senate. Instead, the lifters were cleared for release from Customs in late July.

Also at the Senate four warehousemen recounted that seven Chinese used a portable circular saw to cut open the 1.5-inch thick steel wall of the lifters. It took the lessors four hours to extract the contents, and never returned since then.

The Chinese had left behind at the warehouse asbestos fabric. Mangaoang said it was used to shield the shabu from melting from heat inside the metal lifters and cargo containers shipped on open barges under the sun. Asbestos is not part of the operation of a magnetic lifter, Mangaoang noted, yet there were no requisite overhead cranes, chains, and support frames.

To that Aquino adds that several sacks of asbestos fiber were compacted around the plastic bags of shabu inside the two lifters. But less than half a sack was used for those in the four smuggled lifters. That meant there was more contraband, 1.6 tons of shabu, than in the two lifters, only 355 kilos as decoy.

“We never learn,” Aquino groans. Last year Customs officials belatedly raided a warehouse in Valenzuela City for printing cylinders, also metal, already released from the Manila piers. The cylinders contained 604 kilos of shabu, worth P6.5 billion. That too was a decoy, only 15 percent of what was smuggled in, an earlier Senate inquiry concluded.

“If not for that lucky tip-off from the warehouseman, we would now be awarding and heroizing the very officials who colluded with the drug syndicate,” Aquino says.

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