The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency said Wednesday it has arrested six drug suspects and seized shabu worth P589 million in Samar.
Director General Aaron Aquino identified the suspects as Cesar Uy, Jared Axcel Elaran, Steven Perez, Leonard delos Reyes, Elbert Abella and Jeralou Rapuela.
He said PDEA agents intercepted the suspects along Maharlika Highway in Barangay Tagnao, Gandara, Western Samar, at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 17.
The illegal drugs consisted of 44 packs of shabu weighing 88 kilos and with an estimated value of P598.4 million.
Meanwhile, the Justice department said Wednesday a man using the alias “Johnson Lee” entered the country last month and that he was a Korean national named Kim Yu Seok.
Justice Undersecretary Markk Perete said Kim entered the country on Sept. 30 and had not departed yet.
He said he could not confirm if the foreigner was Johnson Lee, an alleged drug lord who had been a target of a police drug raid in Pampanga in 2013.
Earlier this week, embattled former Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Albayalde was included in the charges filed against the policemen who were allegedly involved in reselling seized illegal drugs in Pampanga six years ago.
During the resumption of the hearings at the Justice department, the PNP Criminal
Investigation and Detection Group included Albayalde as a respondent in its amended referral complaint dated Oct. 21.
Albayalde, a former Pampanga police chief, was charged along with 13 of his former subordinates.
The reinvestigation will focus on the policemen’s alleged violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, qualified bribery, falsification of public documents, perjury and dereliction of duty.
The case involved the supposed cover-up during the November 2013 buy-bust operation involving Johnson Lee, owner of the house in Woodbridge Subdivision, Lakeshore View, Pampanga, which was raided by 13 members of the Provincial Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operation Task Force of the Pampanga Provincial Police Office led by Maj. Rodney Baloyo IV.
The raid yielded a substantial amount of illegal drugs that allegedly were pilfered by the policemen. With PNA