A P5 MILLION house owned by a couple connected to the Kuratong Baleleng Gang has been seized by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), PDEA chair, Director General Wilkins M. Villanueva announced yesterday.
Assisted by the local police, Villanueva and AMLC officials last Monday served a freeze order issued by the Court of Appeals on a house owned by spouses Artemio and Daisy Salas who currently have a warrant of arrest for violation of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
Villanueva, joined by PDEA Region 7 Director Levi Ortiz and officers from the AMLC and the Cebu City Police Station served the CA order inside a high-end subdivision in Bgy. Guadalupe.
Aside from the two-story house in Cebu City, the Salas couple is said to have other properties in Ozamis City and Maasin, Southern Leyte. They also have numerous bank accounts with notable bank transactions that are not commensurate to their declared source of income. The bank accounts are now also frozen.
“Our next move is to file for the forfeiture of their properties in favor of the government so that the government can use the proceeds in the implementation of its anti-illegal drugs campaign or rehabilitation and reintegration program,” Villanueva said.
SINAS OPENS PNP-AMLC FUSION CENTER
Philippine National Police (PNP) chief, General Debold M. Sinas on Tuesday formally opened the PNP-AMLC Fusion Center located at the headquarters of the PNP Drug Enforcement Group headed by Brigadier Gen. Ronald O. Lee in Camp Crame.
The fusion center will serve as a liaison office for information exchange between the AMLC and the PNP-DEG, the PNP Anti-Kidnapping Group under Brig. Gen. Jonnel C. Estomo, the PNP Integrity Monitoring and Enforcement Group under Colonel Thomas R. Frias Jr., the PNP Intelligence Group headed by Col. Warren F. de Leon and the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group under Major Gen. Albert Ignatius D. Ferro would be the PNP units involved in their anti-money laundering efforts.
On Monday, Sinas and AMLC Executive Director Mel Georgie Racela signed a memorandum of agreement to further enhance the two agencies’ partnership to fight foreign and local financiers of terror rings and drug syndicates in the country.
Under the agreement, the PNP-AMLC Fusion Center located at the PNP Drug Enforcement Group headquarters in Camp Crame will be established where the two camps can share related information to each other, which includes intelligence reports.
Sinas said the agreement will help strengthen their financial investigation of drug lords and other syndicates as well as those financing the New People’s Army and other local terrorist and lawless armed groups as well as foreign-led kidnapping-for-ransom gangs.
“We will step up our coordinating, training and capability enhancement regarding financial investigation due to this,” said Sinas.
The idea, according to PNP Deputy Chief for Administration, Lieutenant Gen. Guillermo Lorenzo T. Eleazar is to not only file criminal charges against their targets but to cripple their future activities by identifying their ill-gotten properties and forfeiting them in favor of the government.
