Shabu 11 Case: Court orders Cuenco to testify in next hearing

The court has ordered Cebu City South District Rep. Antonio Cuenco to testify during the hearing on December 6 of the controversial case on the discovery of a shabu laboratory in Mandaue City three years ago.

Mandaue City Regional Trial Court Judge Marilyn Lagura-Yap issued a subpoena to Cuenco after the court granted the motion of lawyer Noel Archival, the counsel of accused Joseph Yu and Allan Garcia. But it was not yet known whether Cuenco will heed the subpoena.

Yu and Garcia were among the 11 persons arrested in the raid by authorities on a shabu laboratory in barangay Umapad on September 24, 2004. The raid on what was  considered as the biggest shabu laboratory in the country yielded at least 675 kilos of shabu and other chemicals used for making the illegal drug.

Cuenco could not be reached for comment when The Freeman contacted him yesterday afternoon on whether he would appear in the hearing.

Lawyer Gloria Lastimosa-Dalawampu, the counsel of alleged shabu laboratory financier Calvin Tan, said Cuenco should not fail to heed the subpoena because he was always present in the past hearings. She also vowed to put Cuenco in a difficult situation once he will sit in the witness stand.

Cuenco is also a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and his friends strongly believed that the congressman is very capable to answer whatever questions hurled at him by the defense lawyers when he takes the witness stand.

Archival said he wanted to ask Cuenco if he understood the conversation between his clients, who are Chinese-speaking. The congressman had reportedly heard Yu telling Garcia that it was Tan who financed the operation of the shabu laboratory.

Cuenco, the vice chairman of the House committee on dangerous drugs, always appeared in the hearings of the case. One of the accused, Hung Ching Chang, testified in favor of the state and pinpointed to Tan as behind the establishment of the shabu factory.

Hung said Tan recruited other persons and took charge of the laboratory’s “funding, as well as its procedures and ins and outs.” He said Tan would just give him instructions on what to do.

According to Hung, it was Tan who introduced him to Yu, who allegedly facilitated the factory in Cebu. Yu reportedly was the one who rented different warehouses used for the operation. - Rene U. Borromeo/LPM