MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte said he cannot yet point a finger at anyone on the smuggling into the Philippines of an estimated P6.8 billion worth of illegal drugs from Taiwan.
“I do not want to blame anybody yet. Wala talaga. In-assume lang iyon kung ganoong puno nito, ganoon ang labas nito,” Duterte said in a speech before members of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas on Tuesday night.
The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency last week found four empty magnetic lifters believed to have contained about 1,000 kilograms of shabu in General Mariano Alvarez town, Cavite province.
The magnetic lifters were similar to the two magnetic lifters containing P4.3-million worth of shabu that the Bureau of Customs intercepted at the Manila International Container Terminal on Aug. 7.
“Iyon, nakita lang. They just assumed that it was also used like the other magnetic lifters. Walang laman iyon. It was speculative, like the one that was discovered dito sa ordinary importations,” Duterte said.
The President, a former prosecutor, warned against making presumptions in criminal cases.
“You have to be very precise, exact and everything … We have to stick to the truth, whether it is nice to hear or not,” he added./PN
