By Leonardo Micua

IF it’s true that lawmen had been doing a surveillance on the tentacles of a syndicate involved in the P2.5 billion shabu two or three months before it was busted in Pozorrubio on August 12, then such illegal activity could have been in business at the site even long  before the election.

For this kind of syndicate to be able to operate for months inside a subdivision in that town without being detected, firstly by barangay officials and second by the police and the town officials, somebody must have been sleeping on their job.

Since we know that a syndicate of that magnitude would not thrive without any protection, it is not remote to suspect that some crooks in the police service and public officials were being paid to look the other way and to keep their mouths shut.

We are not discounting the possibility too that drug money flowed like water during the last election to make certain candidates win, a situation that usually happens in many areas.

Because of the discovery of this big volume of illegal drugs that cast a black mark on our province, there is now a call for PDEA not to limit its investigation to the four suspects arrested, one of them a Chinese national, but to include their protectors who for sure may be high and mighty in government, including their local tentacles.

PDEA too must also pursue its investigation into the possible smuggling of shabu by the sea, which is very likely since we have a long shoreline in the region where the illegal drugs could be landed.

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It is now final. Dagupan did not get anything from the its purchase of more than 29-hectare land for P16 million in Barangay Awai, San Jacinto sometime in 2002. This is according to officials of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) who briefed Mayor Belen Fernandez and her legal team on the matter last Friday.

That was a bad mark for Dagupan City during the early part of 2000. It purchased and paid for a big track of land without even getting a valid land title. The vendee must always insist from the vendor a clean land title before handing a check for the property. That’s the rule. 

But this thing happened and those involved in a caper to defraud the city of P16 million from the coffers got away with it. And you know who one former official blamed for this failed shadowy transaction? The Sunday Punch. 

Yes, The PUNCH was blamed for reporting the details of the illegal transaction that culminated in the city losing its claim to the property, envisioned to be an engineered sanitary landfill for Dagupan City. Of course, The PUNCH stood by its report.

What made the transaction illegal is that the property covered by land reform, was bought for P7 million. Four month months later, the buyer sold it to Dagupan City for P16 million or a profit in just four months of P9 million. It was a brilliant maneuver  by whoever was behind the caper in the beginning until the Department of Agrarian Reform stepped into the picture.

So, after Dagupan paid the property in full, no title could be delivered to Dagupan in return. They made monkey business out of Dagupan City. 

That is why, Dagupan must do everything to recover its money by filing a case against the vendor of the property. I hope the legal office of Mayor Belen is already doing this in order to recover that precious money (including its interests through the years). 

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