House panel: Ex-president Duterte center of grand criminal enterprise

MANILA, Philippines — Former President Rodrigo Duterte appears to be at the “center” of a “grand criminal enterprise” to wage a brutal war on drugs to enable and to profit from the very same scourge he had openly and strongly campaigned to eliminate, according to a preliminary report on a monthslong House inquiry.

As it turned out, Duterte was “the face of illegal drugs and criminality” in the country, Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop said late Thursday, reading a report on the findings of the House quad committee on the links between Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos), illegal drugs and extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during the previous administration.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the quad comm has started to uncover a grand criminal enterprise, and it would seem that at the center of it is former President Duterte,” Acop said. “Napakasakit po nito dahil pawang tayo ay nabudol. (This is so painful because we were all scammed).”

Acierto revelations

He said that a former “right-hand man” of Duterte who had testified during one quad committee hearing, dismissed narcotics officer Eduardo Acierto, described the former chief executive as the “lord of all drug lords.”

“Napakasakit po dahil (It’s very painful because) Mr. Duterte won on a platform of a hardline stance against illegal drugs and criminality. Siya pala ang mukha ng illegal drugs at kriminalidad. (It turned out that he was after all the face of illegal drugs and criminality),” said Acop, a retired police general who was chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.

He said the quad committee’s job was difficult and that no one wanted to go up against a popular former president. But like Duterte, lawmakers were elected by the people and have a responsibility to them, he said.

“Kaya ipagpapatuloy po natin ang ating inquiry at sisguraduhin po naming aayusin ang ating mga batas upang masiguro na hindi na mauulit ang mga kaganapang ating natuklasan. (That’s why we will continue our inquiry and make sure to fix our laws so that none of these things that we have discovered would be repeated),” Acop said.

Summary of findings

He laid down a summary of the quad committee’s findings from its inquiry which opened in August with testimonies and documents presented by dozens of “resource persons,” including retired and active duty police officers, relatives and supporters of drug war victims, local and national officials, and Duterte himself.

Acop reported that Duterte and his inner circle used the drug war as a cover for the so-called “Davao Mafia” to profit off the drug trade and eliminate its competition.

Duterte, who appeared before the panel on Nov. 13, had denied these allegations but admitted that he did encourage police officers to carry out his drug war by all means necessary to eradicate the scourge.

The former president also said he assumed responsibility for everything that happened under his campaign. The police’s official report said over 6,000 people were killed during Duterte’s presidency, but human rights groups believed the number could reach as high as 30,000.

Other testimonies

In addition to Acierto, Acop cited the testimonies of former Bureau of Customs (BOC) intelligence officer Jimmy Guban, ex-BOC broker Mark Taguba, former Senators Leila de Lima and Antonio Trillanes IV, and former Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office general manager and retired police officer Royina Garma. They all identified either Duterte or people close to him as having links to the drug trade or to the human rights violations that came with his drug war.

“Each of these individuals carried with them intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the drug trade in the Philippines—and what do they have in common? They spoke out and revealed what was really happening in the drug war, and because of this, they all suffered and earned the ire of the president,” Acop said.

Yang connection

Duterte’s close associates included his former economic adviser, Chinese businessman Michael Yang, whom Acierto and Guban alleged was a drug lord himself and who supposedly owned a meth lab in Dumoy, Davao City, which was raided by the authorities in 2004.

Though this case is now 20 years old, the Dumoy raid came under renewed scrutiny after Duterte admitted in a recent interview that he “eliminated everybody who was involved,” including six Chinese nationals.

Yang allegedly has links to illegal Pogos with his business partner Allan Lim (also known as Lin Weixiong) and his brother Antonio Yang.

Acierto, Taguba and Guban also linked Yang, Duterte’s son, Davao Rep. Paolo Duterte, and his son-in-law Manases Carpio, to two major drug smuggling cases in 2017 and 2018, which involved P6.4 billion and P3.4 billion worth of crystal methamphetamine (“shabu”), respectively. They said the drugs were smuggled through the Manila International Container Terminal.

‘Tara’ system

These shipments supposedly bypassed inspections through the “tara” system—a deeply entrenched bribery scheme within the BOC where millions of pesos in grease money facilitated the unimpeded entry of drugs.

Acierto was the first to blow the whistle on Yang and reported this to Duterte, Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go, and Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, but he was ignored, the former police colonel said.

Acierto fled the country after supposedly learning of a plot to assassinate him. He is one of the witnesses in the case against Duterte in the International Criminal Court.

One of the most explosive testimonies during the hearings came from Garma, who alleged that there was a rewards system that incentivized the killing of drug offenders by police officers and that this was patterned after the scheme implemented by Duterte in Davao City where he was mayor for over two decades.

Confirmation

Former Albuera, Leyte, police chief Col. Jovie Espenido confirmed the existence of the rewards system in which police officers received up to P100,000 for each alleged drug offender killed. He said the reward was managed by Go, a former special assistant to the President, who allegedly used money from confidential funds and profits from Small Town Lottery. Go has strongly denied this.

“The existence of the rewards system is not denied,” Acop said. “In fact, pinagmayabang pa ito ni former President Duterte at ang kanyang mga alipores (former President Duterte and his cohorts even bragged about it).”

This reward system led to countless EJKs and “so many of them were collateral damage,” Acop said.

Duterte made many incriminating statements at the quad committee hearing, including admitting that he had killed “six or seven” “criminals” when he was mayor.

He also recalled that he often patrolled the streets of Davao on his motorbike in hopes of catching criminals and killing them himself.

Bato: No surprise

Dela Rosa said he was not surprised by Acop’s conclusions.

The senator, Duterte’s first Philippine National Police chief and the first implementer of the drug war, insisted that the House quad committee’s mission was to “destroy the Dutertes.”

“We launched the war on drugs not to enrich ourselves, but to save this republic from becoming a narco state and save the Filipinos, especially the youth, from the evils of illegal drugs,” Dela Rosa told the Inquirer.

“We did not deceive the people. I swear before the graves of my policemen who offered the ultimate sacrifice in the war on drugs,” he said.

PNP data

PNP data from July 2016 to June 2022 showed that 312 officers were killed and 974 were injured in Duterte’s drug war.

The initial findings of the megapanel composed of the committees on human rights, dangerous drugs, public order and safety, and public accounts, will be presented to the plenary on Dec. 17.

Lead chair and Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers said they would resume hearings in January 2025. Meanwhile, they will be working on the legislative measures they filed as part of the quad committee’s output, including a bill that would specifically penalize EJKs, Barbers said.

—WITH REPORTS FROM MARLON RAMOS, PNA, AND INQUIRER RESEARCH

(2024/12/14-05:55)