Senate blue ribbon committee probe into shabu smuggling

Former Customs intelligence officer Jimmy Guban will be transferred to the Department of Justice, pursuant to his admission to the Witness Protection Program.

Radio DzBB reports that personnel from the Department of Justice's WPP fetched Guban from the Senate, where he has been in “voluntary confinement.”

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, however, has declined to detail Guban’s transfer owing to the “confidential” nature of the state’s protection program.

Sen. Richard Gordon, chair of the Senate’s Blue Ribbon Committee, earlier said that Guban is a “vital witness” in the multibillion-peso shabu shipment that slipped past the authorities in July this year.

"With all due respect to the president...we cannot turn over Mr. Guban right away because we are still continuing with the hearings," Sen. Richard Gordon, chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee," says.

The senator says the Senate is a co-equal branch of goverment.

Guban, who is said to have faked IDs and helped facilitate drug smuggling, had been in Senate custody for what Gordon calls "voluntary confinement." He has also applied for inclusion in the Witness Protection Program.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III says Customs intelligence officer Jimmy Guban will remain in Senate custody unless the blue ribbon committee chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon decides to turn him over to the National Bureau of Investigation. 

Senate President Vicente Sotto III says there won't be a warrantless arrest of Customs intelligence officer Jimmy Guban, adding that he has ordered the Office of the Sergeant-At-Arms to secure the official who has been under custody of the blue ribbon committee, according to a news report.

Sotto made the remark after President Rodrigo Duterte said Wednesday night that he ordered Philippine National Police chief Oscar Albayalde to arrest Guban.

Guban was cited in contempt for "lying" during the hearing on the alleged missing P6.8-billion shabu inside magnetic lifters in Cavite. He was detained inside the Senate since September 11.

The Senate Committee on the Accountability of Public Officers and Investigations, also known as the blue ribbon committee, is holding a hearing Wednesday morning on around P6.8 million worth of shabu that allegedly slipped past Customs in August.

The hearing, the sixteenth according to panel chair Sen. Richard Gordon, stemmed from a resolution to investigate P6.4 billion in shabu that slipped through Customs in 2017.  

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, which seized magnetic lifters believed to have been used to bring the drugs in from a warehouse in Cavite, is standing firm on the allegation despite opposition from within government.

The agency last week honored its sniffer dogs that helped find drugs in similar magnetic lifters at the Manila International Container Port on August 7 and indicated the presence of drugs in lifters at the Cavite warehouse on August 10.

The Customs bureau has said there is no basis that magnetic lifters contained drugs. "[B]ased on the result of laboratory analysis from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and Philippine National Police, four magnetic lifters have no presence of dangerous drugs," Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña told a House panel last month.

President Rodrigo Duterte has himself dismissed allegations by PDEA that the lifters contained drugs as speculation. "There was nothing there. They presumed it was filled with shabu and made assumption on the prices," he said.