Anti-drug operatives recovered 905 packs of ‘high-purity’ crystal meth (shabu) valued at P6.8 billion during a raid on a private property in Labrador, Pangasinan on Friday night, October 3.
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director General Isagani Nerez told reporters that the packs had already been loaded into two vehicles, apparently bound for Metro Manila, when these were seized by PDEA agents.
‘If one pack weighs a kilo, then the total is more than one ton,’ Nerez said in an interview uploaded on social media by the Philippine News Agency.
He noted that the supply of shabu in Metro Manila has been dwindling because of its soaring price.
Authorities did not find anyone inside the property, which was being used as a warehouse but contained no illegal drug laboratory Labrador Mayor Noel Uson said the property was purchased only two months ago, but he had no information about the buyer or the previous owner.
The raid was carried out under a search warrant issued by Judge Vincent Lamug of Regional Trial Court Branch 70 in Burgos town. Nerez credited Police Regional Office Ilocos Region director Brig. Gen. Dindo Reyes and Pangasinan Provincial Police director Col. Arbel Mercullo with securing the warrant.
According to Nerez, the raid was linked to a buy-bust operation conducted Thursday along the highway in Labrador, where authorities seized 125 packs of shabu hidden inside a van.
Two high-value targets were arrested in that operation: alias ‘Monkey,’ 40, a Chinese national residing in Paliparan 3, Cavite City; and alias ‘Gardo,’ 54, of Mampang, Zamboanga City, Zamboanga del Sur.
Nerez also disclosed that the 1.4 tons of shabu worth P10 billion intercepted in Zambales last June were bound for Pangasinan, suggesting that the suspects had a local contact in the province.
That same month, billions of pesos worth of shabu were also recovered floating off the coastal towns of western Pangasinan. /das