THE Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Negros Occidental confirmed the drug links of some elected local officials and police officers which affirmed the revelation of a woman who admitted to have worked with an alleged drug lord before.
Jose Tumabini, PDEA provincial chief, made the announcement after a whistleblower came out over the weekend and named several politicians and police officers with connections to the illegal drug trade.
However, Tumabini, did not give the names of the personalities on their list.
“We are still validating all the information on the direct connection of these prominent personalities to illegal drugs,” he said.
The validation and investigation is not an easy task and that they will have an “airtight” case when it is filed against the said personalities.
Tumabuni said that right now, they are focusing on the 2019 mid-term elections.
In a press conference on Saturday, January 26, the woman said she has been hiding for three years already because of the grave threat to her life and her family.
She admitted engaging in the drug trade before as a courier, helping her godfather, whom she tagged as a drug lord in southern Negros.
But the said drug lord had stopped and his son took over the operations in the south.
In 2016, she came up with an affidavit and enumerated those protecting and enjoying financial benefits from the drug trade.
“I already decided to help the government in its fight against illegal drugs. A lot of the police officers and even top elected officials who are drug protectors and that particular top elected official is indeed the mastermind of the illegal drug trade, killing people, filing charges against a lot of people whom could no longer serve his purpose. I gave that affidavit to a particular police officer who is already retired now, and apparently, that affidavit fell on the hands of those police whom I have named in my affidavit,” the whistleblower said.