House panel seeks Bureau of Customs ‘consignee-for-hire’

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives committee on dangerous drugs is seeking a “consignee-for-hire” used in the alleged smuggling of shabu with a value of at least P6.4 billion.

Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, committee chairman, said his panel would again invite Marina Signapan, owner of SMYD Trading, after she failed to attend yesterday’s third hearing on the supposed smuggling case.

He said the committee would be forced to issue a subpoena if she failed to show up in the next hearing.

Signapan has told the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that she was paid by a certain Joel Maritana to be the consignee of the shabu shipment that allegedly slipped past the Bureau of Customs and found its way to a warehouse in General Mariano Alvarez in Cavite.

Maritana denied before the same committee Maritana’s claim. She also claimed that Bureau of Customs (BOC) intelligence officer Jimmy Guban has threatened her.

Guban told the Barbers panel yesterday that Senior Supt. Eduardo Acierto of the Philippine National Police’s anti-drug unit had asked him to look for a consignee that they could used for a shipment of illegal drugs that was supposed to arrive last month.

He claimed that he, Acierto and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Deputy Director General Ismael Fajardo were collaborating on a plan to seize the shipment after receiving intelligence information from an unnamed source.

He said he recommended to Acierto Signapan’s SMYD Trading to be the “consignee-for-hire.”

The modus operandi used in the alleged Cavite shipment is similar to the one employed in the smuggling of shabu with the same value of P6.4 billion that a combined team of PDEA and BOC officials led by then commissioner Nicanor Faeldon seized in Valenzuela City in May last year.

Several Customs officers and private citizens linked to the Valenzuela case, including broker Mark Taguba, are now facing charges. It was Taguba who recruited a consignee-for-hire to handle the shipment.

PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino informed the Barbers committee that he has relieved Fajardo of his post after he has linked to the supposed shipment of illegal drugs.

He said he has also subjected his deputy to a lifestyle check.

“We received information that he has a lot of properties,” he said.

He said his people are looking deeper into Fajardo’s role in the Cavite shipment.

Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña said he too has relieved Guban of his assignment.

“He has tendered his resignation but I have not acted on it because we are still investigating him,” he said.

Barbers said based on testimonies and evidence, Fajardo, Acierto, who did not show up in yesterday’s hearing, and Guban “are at least three prominent figures behind this shipment, whatever it contained.”

“This is the scariest thing here – when officers who are supposed to enforce our laws and protect our people are themselves linked to alleged illegal activities,” he said.

Asked by Antipolo City Rep. Romeo Acop how many times Guban met with Fajardo and Acierto, the Customs intelligence officer said he could remember one meeting.

However, when Acop posed the same query to Fajardo, the latter said they met three times.

“You cannot remember how many times you met? I think you are lying,” Acop told Guban.

The Barbers committee later voted to cite Guban in contempt and to detain him after the Senate, which has also decided to hold him, sets him free.

Acop urged the committee to continue seeking the testimonies of Signapan and Acierto, who did not show up in yesterday’s hearing, “so we can have the complete picture of this incident.”

Acop also revealed that Guban went abroad 56 times since 2006, or an average of 4.7 times a year, as a Customs employee with a monthly salary of about P21,000. 

Guban said he and his family could afford to travel because his wife is the daughter of a Bicol businessman who owns a chain of small hotels and a hardware store.

However, when asked by Samar Rep. Edgar Mary Sarmiento if his wife’s alleged wealth is reflected in his statements of assets and liabilities (SALN), the Customs officer gave a negative answer.

Sarmiento said Guban’s 2017 SALN shows that the BOC employee had assets worth P1.2 million and liabilities of P4 million.

Barbers said his committee, despite holding three hearings, is still trying to determine whether a huge shabu shipment indeed found its way to the Cavite warehouse.

“So far, we have not found the corpus delicti or concrete evidence of a crime because the alleged shabu shipment is still missing. So it’s still speculative for us to say that illegal drugs were smuggled,” Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers told members of his committee in the court of their third hearing on the case.

“But on the basis of circumstances surrounding the shipment, the documentation, the video footage showing Chinese-looking men in the Cavite warehouse, the arrest of a Hong Kong Chinese with one kilo of shabu, and other circumstantial evidence, it would be correct to assume that illegal drugs indeed entered the country,” he said.

He said even the testimony in the Senate of Customs x-ray officer Lourdes Mangaoang that there were “darkened portions” of the x-ray images of the alleged shipment is not conclusive proof of illegal drugs.

Barbers made the statement after Lapeña and Aquino informed the committee that they have not yet concluded their separate investigations into the supposed shabu shipment.

Lapeña and Aquino said they have both asked the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to do its own probe because “it is a credible and non-partisan agency.” 

Earlier, Lapeña said there was no such contraband, citing PDEA’s own swabbing test of the Cavite warehouse, which yielded negative results.

On the other hand, Aquino insisted that there was shabu in four metal containers that was positively detected by their illegal drugs-sniffing dogs.

President Duterte has taken the side of Lapeña, saying, “They (PDEA) were assuming that those metal, magnetic contain… So they bore a hole, there was nothing there…it was just pure speculation.”

Despite the difficulties his committee is facing, Barbers said he and his colleagues would continue to pursue their inquiry “until we ferret our the truth.”