The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) filed graft charges on Tuesday against two Pampanga mayors in the Office of the Ombudsman for the sale of 4,000 hogs at a piggery that has been concealing an undergrand shabu laboratory in Magalang town on September 7 last year.
Accrording to Wilkins Villanueava, PDEA National Capital Region director, Magalang Mayor Ma. Lourdes Paras-Lacson sold the pics to Bacolor Mayor Jose Maria Hizon "without consulting PDEA or proper authorities."
A raid was held on the 4-hectare piggery in Barangay Balitucan (also known as San Ildefonso), leaded by Villanueva. The read lead to the discovery of the laboratory beneath an animal feel mill-cum-warehouse.
"We sued [them] because Republic Act No. 9165 [Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002] states that the proceeds or profits from a facility [used in the manufacture or storage of illegal drugs] should be under the custody of the court,” he said.
The PDEA-NCR director added the mayors decided on their own and ignored the fact that the pigs were evidence in establishing that the piggery was front to hide the shabu lab.
Police were sent to the area to secure the compound.
Aside from the two mayors, five other government employees, who conducted the bidding, and Barangay Balitucan chief, Marcial Alfaro.
Lacson defended their action as a course to "safeguard the general welfare of the people," citing sanitation concerns and the fate of the pics which were abandoned by their caretakers after the lab was seized.
The decision, she said, was “in consonance with the advice and legal opinion of the Department of the Interior and Local Government.”
“We can’t buy the pigs because that is not in our mandate,” she said.
Hizon said he should not be implicated in the case because his action was “not in line with my official function as a chief executive.”
“I was a buyer in good faith,” he said.
PDEA counted 3,998 pigs at the time of the raid.
Seven Chinese nationals were arrested at the time of the raid for running the shabu laboratory. The piggery was 3 kilometers from the police's Regional Training Center and the Central Luzon Drug Rehabilitation Center.
Five minors found in the piggery were turned over to the Departmet of Social Welfare and Development.
Source: Inquirer
Images: Inquirer | Sun Star
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