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From Philippine jails, Chinese drug lords are directing illegal trade: ex-police general
- High-profile inmates in maximum security prisons are still overseeing the country’s drugs trade, Benjamin Magalong has told a Senate probe
- His other revelations on police corruption include ‘recycling’ crystal meth seized in raids and ransoming off newly arrested Chinese drug kingpins
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Chinese drug lords serving life sentences are directing the Philippines’ illegal drugs trade from deep inside maximum security prisons, a retired police general told senators on Thursday.
Two other witnesses, including Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, also told the Senate probe into corruption in the prison system that such illegal activities continued today, but at a lesser scale than before the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.
“We found out that despite being detained inside [New Bilibid Prison, the Philippines’ main penitentiary], these Chinese drug personalities continued to remotely manage the drug trade in the entire country,” said Benjamin Magalong, former intelligence chief of the Philippine National Police.
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Police investigations showed that “all roads practically led” to the prison, said Magalong, who also previously headed the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency’s operations in Metro Manila. He was elected mayor of the mountain resort city of Baguio this May.
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Chinese nationals have been singled out by Duterte in his war on drugs, which is now in its third year. While their number has not been disclosed by the government, Senator Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, noted in a September 12 Senate hearing that high-level drug lords who called the shots in the national penitentiary were mostly Chinese.
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