A former chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) is under detention at the House of Representatives, one month after he was given a reprieve due to the recent holidays.

Former PDEA chief Wilkins Villanueva, who headed the agency during the term of former president Rodrigo Duterte, was ordered detained in the House premises on 12 December after he was cited in contempt by the Quad Committee for allegedly lying under oath.

The panel, however, decided to defer his detention to allow Villanueva to spend Christmas and New Year with his family.

Quad committee chair Robert Ace Barbers said Villanueva “presented himself to the House Sergeant at Arms” last Monday, which marked the resumption of the Congress session following the holiday break.

“He is now in the detention facility,” Barbers added.

To recall, Villanueva sparked a controversy when he refused to directly answer whether he had interrogated the wife of the reported financier of a raided shabu laboratory in Dumoy, Davao City, on New Year’s Eve 2004.

The alleged financier was identified as Allan Sy and his wife was Jed Pilapil-Sy.

The raid allegedly led to the fabrication of criminal charges against Jed Sy who was arrested without a warrant in 2005 and continues to serve her prison sentence to this day.

Villanueva, who was then PDEA regional head for Northern Mindanao, initially insisted at the quad panel hearing that his subordinates only “interviewed” Mrs. Sy. However, he later admitted that she was arrested without a warrant.

Bato speaks up

Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, a prominent Duterte ally, criticized the Quadcomm for detaining former and current uniformed officers, such as Villanueva, instead of using government resources to investigate the prevalence of criminality in the country.

In a separate interview, quad comm co-chair Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr. disputed Dela Rosa’s claim asserting the need to present legitimate statistics to substantiate his allegations. Dela Rosa was the Philippine National Police chief during the Duterte administration.

Abante said that contrary to Dela Rosa’s assertion, index crime incidents plunged to 13.51 during the first 10 months of 2024, citing a PNP report.

“My suggestion to him, because he is a senator, is to tell his researcher to provide him the data before he rants about it,” Abante said.

He advised Dela Rosa to cooperate instead with the investigation of the Quadcomm into Duterte’s drug war and the proliferation of criminal activities such as drug smuggling tied to the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators rather than to “despise” their efforts.

Abante’s panel, the House committee on human rights that is part of the Quadcomm, repeatedly invited Dela Rosa, who spearheaded the brutal drug war, to shed light on his alleged involvement in the anti-narcotics campaign.

Dela Rosa, however, contended that he would never participate in the House probe, calling it a fishing expedition.