P.1-M reward up for gold robbers

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet — The Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. is offering a P100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of seven robbers who killed five of its employees and carted away P14 million in gold bars last weekend.

This developed as Chief Superintendent Victor Luga, Cordillera police director, has given the Benguet police three days to show progress in its investigation into the heist.

Luga said probers are eyeing communist guerrillas or an organized crime syndicate in the robbery-slaying.

In the 1990s, rebels torched Lepanto’s gold ore dryer in its mill site in Mankayan town, a few kilometers away from where a company engineer and four guards were gunned down in last weekend’s heist.

Luga said they got information that the mining firm has received threats from the New People’s Army. — Artemio Dumlao