House inquiry into largest shabu haul to continue — Rep. Acop

The congressional inquiry into the P3.6 billion shabu bust, one of the biggest drug hauls seized in Mexico, Pampanga last year, would continue despite the continuing non-participation of the Chinese personalities implicated in the case, a lawmaker said Thursday.

Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop said the House committee on dangerous drugs is keen to scrutinize the case further to unveil the names of the Chinese suspects, the alleged incorporators of the Empire 999 Realty Corporation, which owns the warehouse in Mexico where about 530 kilos of shabu were seized.

“Gusto namin makita kung saan may diperensya. Kasi ang iniisip namin, kulang pa ba yung batas natin? O kulang yung implementation ng batas natin?" said Acop, the vice chair of the panel.

On Wednesday, the committee ordered the arrest of Michael Yang, former president Rodrigo Duterte's economic adviser, for repeatedly ignoring the panel's invitation to testify in the investigation.

Yang was summoned to the hearing after his "associate" Lincoln Ong was found to be an incorporator of a company with links to Empire 999.

Acop said Yang has a lot to explain, including his alleged ties with illegal drug syndicates, owning a shabu laboratory in Davao and Cagayan de Oro.

"According to the information that we are getting and the testimonies of the [resource persons], it seems that he has connections with illegal drug personalities," he said.

"He is the facilitator of the entry of illegal drug precursors."

According to Acop, authorities also discovered that the full-blooded Chinese incorporators of the Empire 999 possessed authentic Philippine passports.

"In the corporation where the illegal drugs yielded in Mexico, Pampanga should be brought, we found that there are Chinese members of the corporation. We discovered that they are not Filipino-Chinese but really Chinese, that they are here in the Philippines having two passports," he said.

"They get their visas through the Philippine Retirement Authority, the Bureau of Immigration (BI), and the Department of Foreign Affairs."

Calls have been made to scrap Executive Order 285, which grants the BI the ability to issue student visas to foreign nationals, amid concerns that this has been exploited by Chinese nationals.

Earlier this year, the BI reported that about 24,189 student visas were granted to various foreigners in 2023, 66 percent or 16,190 of whom are Chinese.

Some lawmakers have also sounded alarm on the alleged abuse in the grant of special resident retiree visas, which led to the suspicious influx of Chinese nationals into the country.

ACT-CIS Partylist Rep. Erwin Tulfo previously said that at least 30,000 Chinese nationals hold SRRVs in the country, albeit they have yet to reach the retirement age of 50. Many of them are young retirees aged 35 years old.