DANGEROUS Drugs Board officials have accused Catanduanes Gov. Joseph Cua as being involved in the illegal drug trade, which the Duterte administration is trying to stop to the last pusher and user.
DDB chairman Dionisio Santiago, director general of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency from 2006 to 2011, was responding to reporters’ questions during a recent news forum where he said Cua’s alleged links were relayed to him by assets of his agency.
There was no immmediate reaction from Cua, who was accused, along with two others, of the murder at the Department of Justice of community newspaper publisher Larry Que last year.
Que, shot dead last December by a masked assassin in Virac, Catanduanes, barely two weeks after he set up Catanduanes News Now, was the first journalist killed under the Duterte administration.
Accompanied by members of the National Press Club, Edralyn Pangilinan, Que’s common-law wife, filed the complaint against Cua, Prince Lim Subion and Vincent Masagca Tacorda.
Santiago said Duterte was likely aware of Cua’s involvement in the manufacture and sale of illegal drugs in the Bicol region.
Reports suggested Que had discovered that Cua used his transportation business as a front for transporting the shabu manufactured in Catanduanes in and out of the island province.
But Que never got to publish his expose since he was gunned down by unknown assailants last December.
A month before Que’s death, the Philippine National Police raided a large-scale shabu laboratory in Barangay Palta Small, in Virac.
Cua denied involvement in the drug trade.
In his July 17 speech, Duterte vowed to keep his eyes on the National Bureau of Investigation’s director for Catanduanes amid the alleged ongoing drug trade in the province.
In his expletive-laden Filipino rhetoric, the President said:“May isa pa ditong drug na… Isang NBI director, isa ka pa. P****i**, bantay ka sa akin. ‘Yung sa Catanduanes. Sinisikreto lang ninyo ‘yan, hindi niyo ibinabalita.”
In 2004, the PNP Criminal Investigation & Detection Group conducted operations on one of Cua’s warehouse in Tatalon, Quezon City, where the CIDG seized raw materials (ephedrine) used for the production of illegal drugs.
Eventually, however, due to the connections and resources of Cua, he was cleared, according to police.
The CIDG agents who conducted the operations, according to police reports, became the Cua’s bodyguards.
At the same time, Cua’s cousin Joker Cua, known to have actively sold drugs in Catanduanes, was also apprehended and charged with possession and pushing of shabu/illegal drugs.
He is has since been detained at the Bilibid National Penitentiary.