NBI to charge 13 more in rice smuggling mess

BUTUAN CITY – The Caraga office of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is filing smuggling charges against 13 private individuals next week over a rice smuggling controversy here last July.

Lawyer Reynaldo Esmeralda, NBI-Caraga assistant regional director, said they are completing the documentation of evidence for the filing of the charges with the city prosecutor’s office next week.

Earlier, the NBI lodged administrative and criminal charges against 13 police officers and government officials with the Ombudsman-Mindanao for allegedly failing to protect the government’s interest in the rice smuggling incident.

The controversy stemmed from the disappearance of MV Rodeo while under guard at the Lumbocan wharf here last July 12. The ship was allegedly carrying 17,000 sacks of smuggled rice when it was apprehended.

The vessel was subsequently found in Cebu City, but its name had allegedly been changed to MV Jan Dean, the NBI said.

NBI-Caraga director Manuel Almendares, in a report to NBI director Reynaldo Wycoco, said both physical and chemical scrutiny of the cargo ship showed that MV Rodeo and MV Jan Dean are one and the same.

Almendares said this finding is corroborated by affidavits of Coast Guard personnel and two crewmen of the vessel and video footage taken by an ABS-CBN crew.

"We have not only unearthed the mystery of the vanishing cargo ship but also prosecuted those who violated the law by evading taxes due the government," Esmeralda said in a press conference last Wednesday.