Shabu Lab Case: Warehouse owner cleared from raps

The Regional Trial Court has dismissed the criminal case filed against the owner of the warehouse in barangay Paknaan, Mandaue City, where the clandestine shabu laboratory was raided by the police in September 2004, because the prosecution failed to prove his guilt.

Mandaue City-based RTC Branch 28 judge Marilyn Yap said the prosecution’s only evidence against Richard Ong was the contract of lease that he signed as the lessor of “CAPS R’ US” warehouse and it cannot stand to convict him beyond reasonable doubt.

The court granted the demurrer to evidence filed by Ong, meaning that the court dismissed the case filed against him without requiring him to present his defenses because the prosecution  failed to establish his guilt.

When Yap allowed Ong to post bail in 2005, the court warned the prosecution that the mere contract of lease may not stand in court to convict the accused of his case.

“It behooved upon the prosecution then to present evidence in addition to the contract of lease with co-accused Joseph Yu to confirm that Richard Ong knew of the manufacture of shabu inside the premises occupied by Yu and allowed it,” the court said

According to the court a positive identification of Ong is material because it would have indicated circumstantial evidence of his participation in the criminal resolution.

Yap said after two years the prosecution presented several witnesses and offered quite a volume of objects and documents as evidence in court, but even as it rested on its case it still failed to present evidence against Ong.

It was explained by the court in its order issued last Friday that although probable cause was found to warrant the filing of the charge against Ong in court, the evidence of his guilt was not strong that he had conspired with the alleged shabu manufacturers.

“Conspiracy is not presumed, it must be proved as convincingly as the criminal intent itself,” Yap said, “it was the duty of the court to order his arrest based on probable cause, it is equally its duty to order the dismissal of his case.”

It was learned that during the trial of the case, one of the men arrested during the raid, British national Hung Chin Chang, implicated all of his co-accused, except for the two warehouse owners, in the two shabu manufacturing cases.

Hung acted as the state witness and testified in court with the aid of a Chinese interpreter and described how the operation was conceptualized until the raid of the shabu laboratory in Sept. 24, 2004.

Hung and 13 other —including Calvin Tan, the accused as the financier of the shabu lab— are facing two drug manufacturing cases for the operation of the clandestine shabu laboratories in barangays Umapad and Paknaan in Mandaue City.

A total of 675 kilos of shabu, several chemicals and laboratory equipment were found inside the laboratory allegedly put up by Tan who hired Hung to manage it.

It was Tan who also introduced Hung to accused Joseph Yu who facilitated the factory in Cebu.  Hung said Yu rented the different warehouses used for the operation.  But Hung did not mention the name of warehouse owner Richard Ong. —/BRP