DAVAO -- Authorities are conducting further investigation on a reefer van in a container yard in Tibungco, Davao City that showed traces of having been a receptacle for bricks of cocaine.
The container van, with the suspicious traces that indicate it once held cocaine bricks, was noticed Sunday morning.
Davao City Police Office (DCPO) Director Vicente Danao Jr. said they were alerted to the suspicious marks in a Maersk container van. No cocaine brick, however, was found. Just the marks that earlier vans found with cocaine had.
"I just hope wala at hindi dito sa Davao, though we considered this place a transshipment point," he added.
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)-Davao public information officer Noli Nephi Dimaandal said their agency is also conducting further investigation on the matter.
"Sa karon, wala pa mi any updates sa maong report (We don't have any updates yet)," Dimaandal said.
Authorities are more inclined to believe that the illegal shipment has already been retrieved and delivered before the van arrived in Davao City.
Security has been tightened at the Tibungco container yard pending the result of the investigation.
Last March, a total of 63 bricks of cocaine worth around P6 million were seized and voluntarily surrendered after a container van's interior panels showed several remaining bricks hidden in them.
Of the 63 bricks, 24 were recovered from inside the van. But since there were empty compartments that showed some bricks were already retrieved, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte called on those who got the bricks to return them. It took one month before all bricks were accounted for.
Last March's haul showed that the interior panels are rigged to have compartments big enough to fit in one brick weighing around one kilo of cocaine each.
In 2009, similar cocaine bricks were found inside a Maersk reefer van. But in the 2009 discovery, some local officers of Maersk were implicated as having ordered the bricks to be hidden, resulting in a criminal case filed against them.
Smuggling of cocaine by hacking container vans is a global syndicate that no less than the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is trying to crack down on.
The problem is great simply because of the sheer number of container vans that are shipped from country to country all across the world.
The UN estimates more than 420 million maritime vans moved around the global trade, of which only two percent are inspected. Thus, these same vans have been serving as receptacles to carry the illegal drugs by global syndicates. (Sun.Star Davao/Sunnex)