Where were you when you first heard about magnetic scrap lifters?
YEARS from now, I reckon, we shall be asking ourselves that question. For the record, I was sitting in the café of the Senate building in Manila with a bottle of lukewarm Lipton ice tea and eating a thin-cut white bread tuna fish sandwich.
I remember the moment well.
It was just a few months ago, in late August. A wet and humid day. I was talking to someone whose identity, I’m afraid, will need to remain anonymous. “These things are really huge,” said my snacking companion, so amazed he could scarcely finish his ham and cheese. Both woefully ignorant about heavy industrial equipment, we were struggling to make sense of the bizarre news.
Two major shipments of the illegal drug crystal meth, locally known as shabu, had recently managed to enter the country. The first, containing around 500 kilograms of shabu, worth between P2 and P4 billion, reportedly originating from Malaysia, was seized in Manila by Bureau of Customs officers on August 7. The drugs were discovered wrapped in foil and concealed in two magnetic scrap lifters. The officers soaked up the media limelight.
But before you could say “Gosh, the war on drugs, which has claimed thousands of lives, might actually be working,” more magnetic scrap lifters were discovered a day later at a warehouse in Cavite, just outside of Manila. Officers of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) were not looking so pleased.
The lifters had been standing in the warehouse for some three weeks. Trained sniffer dogs found only traces of shabu in the cavities of the lifters. Authorities believed that a Taiwanese drug syndicate was behind the operation. Over one ton of shabu, worth more than P11 billion, had entered the country undetected. It had simply vanished.
My brain just couldn’t seem to get a grip. It was only about a year ago that I was writing on the entry and disappearance of P6.4 billion worth of shabu. That record amount has now been superseded.
At the hearing convened by Congress in mid-August, Customs chief Isidro Lapeña, was coolly dubious. A swab test undertaken by the Philippine National Police and PDEA, he said, showed negative results. The lifters had not contained drugs. Mountains were being made out molehills, he seemed to suggest.
Sniffer dogs begged to differ, however, as PDEA chief Aaron Aquino lately reminded everyone. A whistleblower, clearly passionate about her job in the Customs x-ray department, also cried foul. She brandished x-ray scans showing suspicious-looking shadows within the cavities of the lifters. There were also residues of asbestos used to protect the drug packages. Moreover, she asserted, intelligence reports had warned of impending drug shipments to the Philippines as early as May. What was happening, she concluded, was a colossal cover-up.
Reporting in the South China Morning Post recently, Alan Robles, found that the shabu ending up in the Philippines, was manufactured in China and smuggled into the country by international criminal syndicates via transshipment points in Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan. But the key to a successful shipment, Robles writes, “lies in the participation of a network of Philippine officials who facilitate the arrival, clearance and distribution of shabu.”
“Just how big are these magnetic scrap lifters? Are they hollow?” I recalled asking, confused. I scrutinized a picture of them in the newspaper. Magnetic scrap lifters, I have since learned, are massive, around two meters in diameter, circular-shaped metal drums, draped in hulking steel chains, that are attached to the arms of giant cranes. They are used to pick up and move around large pieces of scrap metal.
And also as convenient places to hide huge amounts of illegal drugs.
rachelagreyes@gmail.com
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