Manila: Due to the increasing number of public officials implicated in drug-related cases, the Philippines’ Interior Department has formed a special body to ensure the charges are properly investigated.
“We are 101 per cent behind the President [Rodrigo Duterte] in his campaign against criminality and illegal drugs. This is why we created Task Force Agila (Eagle) to ensure a thorough probe against the so-called narco execs,” Interior Secretary Esmael Sueno said on Monday.
Over the past several weeks, a number of public officials — including those elected into office, such as mayors and governors — have been exposed to have links to the illicit drugs trade.
In many cases, these elected “servants” of the people have turned out to be, not just political kingpins, but also drug lords in their localities.
Such was the case of Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa who has been identified by Duterte himself as being one of the drug lords operating in Eastern Visayas Region.
The elder Espinosa is under investigation and his son, Kerwin, is also being sought by authorities for his role in the local drug trade.
Days after he was named by the President, six of the mayor’s bodyguards died in a shoot-out with police.
Espinosa is among at least 27 mayors and other public officials who have been identified by Duterte to have drug links.
Sueno said the newly formed body will handle the investigation of all past and incumbent local public officials with alleged links to illegal drugs.
“Task Force Agila will also take charge of the reception of evidence, documentation, strategy, case determination and case development against local public officials who have been and will be publicly named by President Duterte as involved in illegal drugs.”
The identified public officials will initially be considered as “persons of interest” for their alleged involvement in illegal drugs either as protector, pusher, financier or user. Later on, formal cases would be filed against them.
Task Force Agila is authorised to demand and receive data about the persons of interest, coordinate with other government departments, bureaus, agencies and offices, as well as to make recommendations based on its findings.
As Duterte’s war versus drugs nears its second month, the President said he is planning to put up a P2 million (Dh157,994) bounty for information that could lead to the arrest of police officers protecting drug syndicates.
“I might be inclined to place a reward on their heads, the members of the so-called ‘ninjas,’ or the police who are protecting drug syndicates in this country and I’m placing per head P2 million,” Duterte said in his speech he gave in Taguig City on the occasion of National Heroes Day.
So many officials have grown rich in the drug trade that even public servants entrusted to keep the menace away from the public are the ones who are allegedly deeply involved in selling the illicit items.
“I want the police and the military to destroy the [narcotics] apparatus in this country. We all know that the Philippines is also a transshipment point of other countries,” the president said.
