National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Atty. Melvin Matibag on Friday, 14 August, led the raid on a steel manufacturing facility in Barangay Ilang, Bunawan.

The operation, conducted with the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) and other agencies, uncovered radioactive isotopes in steel products and materials, as well as substandard reinforcing bars.

He is accompanied by PAOCC Undersecretary Benjamin Acorda and other security forces.

Authorities also rescued 174 Filipino workers from the facility. 

The steel manufacturing company raided in Davao City is a locally registered company originally established in 2012.

There has yet no specific individual incorporators and owners explicitly identified by the NBI or PAOCC, investigators are actively reviewing the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings to prosecute all listed incorporators, directors, and majority stockholders.

Report showed the operation was done on Thursday through a search warrant stemming from a National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) probe into allegations that the plant in Barangay Ilang, Bunawan had produced and distributed substandard steel bars.

The PAOCC said technical examinations confirmed the presence of radioactive isotopes, including Uranium-238, Thorium-228, Thorium-232, and Radium-226, across different stages and areas of the company’s operations,” the task force noted.

The commission said these were documented in finished ‘DMS’ rebars, furnace-related materials, residual black sand, industrial powders, dust, wastes, wastewater, and other production and stored materials.

The rescued workers was removed from an industrial environment found to contain radioactive-bearing materials, dust, fumes, wastes, and production residues that posed risks of continued occupational exposure.

The Philippine Nuclear Research Institute certified that the company that owned the plant had no license to acquire, receive, possess, use, store, sell, transfer, import or export nuclear or radioactive materials, the PAOCC added.

According to the commission, an inspection by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources found that the company’s environmental compliance certificate did not authorize them to handle, process, store or use radioactive materials in the plant.

It also noted that the recovered reinforcing steel bars underwent product-standard testing.

The commission said that of eight samples purchased from commercial hardware establishments across Mindanao, four, or 50 percent, failed the mandatory mass-variation requirement under PNS (Philippine National Standard) 49:2020,” it detailed.

PNS 49:2020 is set by the Bureau of Philippine Standards for reinforcing steel bars.

The commission noted that the recovery of the allegedly radioactive and substandard reinforcing steel bars were in the public interest, citing that NBI investigators had found “DMS”-marked reinforcing steel bars supposedly in the rubble of structures that collapsed during the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that shook Mindanao last 8 June.

“Authorities stressed, however, that the presence of DMS rebars in the collapsed structures does not by itself establish that the steel caused their collapse,” the commission noted.

The high-profile coordination between the NBI and PAOCC highlights an intensifying government crackdown on illegal industrial plants and organized corporate criminality in the region.