PDEA vs DOJ: Life terms loom

The Dangerous Drugs Act states:

• Sec. 27. Criminal Liability of a Public Officer or Employee for Misappropriation, Misapplication or Failure to Account for the Confiscated, Seized and/or Surrendered Dangerous Drugs, Plant Sources of Dangerous Drugs, Controlled Precursors and Essential Chemicals, Instruments/Paraphernalia and/or Laboratory Equipment, Including the Proceeds or Properties Obtained from the Unlawful Act Committed. The penalty of life imprisonment to death and a fine ranging from Five Hundred Thousand pesos (P500,000) to Ten Million pesos (P10,000,000), in addition to absolute perpetual disqualification from any public office, shall be imposed upon any public officer or employee who misappropriates, misapplies or fails to account for confiscated, seized or surrendered dangerous drugs, plant sources of dangerous drugs, controlled precursors and essential chemicals, instruments/paraphernalia and/or laboratory equipment, including the proceeds or properties obtained from the unlawful acts as provided for in this Act.

• Sec. 29. Criminal Liability for Planting of Evidence. Any person found guilty of ‘planting’ any dangerous drug and/or controlled precursor and essential chemical, regardless of quantity and purity, shall suffer the penalty of death.

The provisions put lawmen on notice. Recycling confiscated drugs or concocting evidence — for quick bucks or promotion — can fetch them the harshest punishment. The death penalty has been abolished, but conviction still means life imprisonment. The stiff fine also spells penury for the convict’s family, with no more prospect of a government job.

Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency operatives swear to be clean. Still the provisions hang like a Damocles sword over their heads. They have to prove that their arrest of the three suspected drug-trafficking “Alabang boys” was above board. Otherwise, they can go to jail forever, plus possibly forfeit more than their life’s earnings and government careers.

In the view of state prosecutors specializing in drug cases, the PDEA operation at Ayala-Alabang last Sept. 2 was wrong. Allegedly there was no arrest warrant. The PDEA did not coordinate with the local police. And it did not present as evidence the cash and drugs confiscated from the trio. In effect, the PDEA misappropriated, misapplied and failed to account for the evidence that operatives virtually concocted in their raid.

Two prosecutors swore by such in yesterday’s House hearing on the caper. If they follow the legal provisions against evidence mishandling and planting evidence, they must not stop at getting the accused released. They must sue the narcs and ensure their sentencing for life. Why they haven’t done so is a mystery.

The PDEA insists it was a buy-bust maneuver. In the past the same specialist prosecutors swiftly had filed court charges against PDEA arrestees based on the same mode of entrapment. This time around they’re calling it an “illegal warrant-less arrest” and so want the trio released. The difference now, the PDEA laments, is that grease money changed hands. It suspects as much because kith and kin of the wealthy trio had offered it bribes of P3 million to P20 million. One of the would-be bribers is a military academy classmate of a PDEA major. The PDEA further quotes an asset as saying the bribe reached P50 million by the time it reached the justice department prosecutors. It avers that it did submit evidence, including positive drug tests on the trio, just that the prosecutors ignored these.

Following the Penal Code, the PDEA must file charges against the corruptors of public officials. It must also charge the prosecutors with misapplying evidence, to warrant life terms, up to P10-million fines, and perpetual bar from public office. Why it hasn’t done so is also a mystery.

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The NBI probe of the P50-million bribery of drug prosecutors is led by Arnel Dalumpines. Name rings a bell? Dalumpines was the agent who “investigated” the “theft” of “all copies” of the DOTC-ZTE contract in Apr. 2007 “hours after the signing” in China. He made a show of “charging” Emmanuel Ang, RP trade attaché to Guangzhou. But nothing came out of it. Malacañang cleaners only concocted and disclosed the theft in June 2007 to head off the prying press.

Dalumpines even tried to implicate me then in the made-up crime. Interviewed in my radio show (Saturdays, 8 a.m., DWIZ 882-AM), he said a “columnist” who was exposing the ZTE scam must be one of the thieves. His proof, if it could be called that: “the columnist knows too much about the ZTE deal.” Framing exposers of scams was a novel way to muzzle the press; in the past they just filed nuisance libel suits. Hours after I revealed that in the Senate in Sept. 2007, I received death threats.

Maybe Dalumpines needs lessons in solid research and sourcing in police and journalistic investigations. That’s so the public will accept that his “review” of the “Alabang boys” case is in the interest of truth.

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