Bataan bodega yields shabu chemicals anew

CAMP OLIVAS, Pampanga – Equipment and substances that could produce P150 million worth of shabu were seized during a raid on a warehouse in Pilar, Bataan by a joint team of the provincial police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency last Saturday.

Senior Superintendent Odelon Ramoneda, Bataan police director, reported to Chief Superintendent Errol Pan, Central Luzon police director, that the PDEA first raided the warehouse in a compound in Panilao, Pilar town in December 2005 and confiscated several drums of various substances and equipment used in shabu manufacturing.

Ramoneda said the raiding team was armed with a search warrant from Judge Rolando Tungol of the Municipal Trial Court of Abucay, Bataan.

Seized from the warehouse in last Saturday’s raid were 11 big pails and 25 plastic bags of a white substance believed to be ephedrine; 150 bottles of a still unidentified liquid, some of them with Chinese markings; three used gas masks; and packs of salt and suspected activated charcoal covered with banana leaves and stalks.

Ramoneda told The STAR that the alleged warehouse owner, Susan de Leon, and her caretaker, Freddie Baustista, will be investigated on the presence of the shabu substances in the compound.  

The confiscated items were brought to the provincial crime laboratory for examination, he said. 

Bautista was quoted in the police report as claiming that the seized items were old ones left behind by PDEA agents when the warehouse operated by Taiwanese nationals was raided in 2005. 

However, last Saturday’s raiding team said that what they found in the warehouse were newly delivered, Ramoneda said.

Last Friday night, a combined police-PDEA team raided the residence of Emerson Ebido, 31, a former Sang­guniang Kabataan chairman in Barangay Calaylayan, Abucay town, and seized 21 kilograms of ephedrine worth P42 million. 

Ebido, according to a police report, was a former police asset on illegal drugs.