SEN. Richard Gordon yesterday said Johnson Lee, the suspected Chinese drug lord allegedly freed by the 13 “ninja cops” involved in the dubious November 2013 Pampanga drug raid, has returned to the country using a fake passport.
Gordon, chairman of the Senate blue ribbon and justice committees investigating the ninja cops scandal, said the information came from the Bureau of Immigration (BI).
“The latest thing we found out about Johnson Lee, in fairness to Immigration, it came from them, he came in through using another passport,” Gordon said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.
Gordon’s committees have been looking into a hodgepodge of issues, ranging from a scheme to profit off the computation of prisoners’ good conduct time allowance credits to a supposed conspiracy by “ninja cops” to “recycle” illegal drugs seized in operations.
He said he next on his agenda is an investigation into the effectiveness of immigration bureau’s control, saying the agency should “follow and check” people “of ill repute.”
“Dapat ‘pag may crime, meron nang order sa immigration, bantayan niyo iyan. (If there’s crime, there should be an order for immigration to watch out). Something is wrong in immigration that they should be fixed also,” Gordon added.
Gordon did not respond to requests for more details on when Lee supposedly reentered the country.
The committee on Friday issued a draft report following weeks of inquiry into an anomalous November 2013 operation in Mexico, Pampanga.
The 13 policemen, all subordinates of resigned police chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde who was then the acting provincial police chief, allegedly received a P50-million bribe from Lee in exchange for letting him go and arresting a fall guy named Ding Wenkun in his stead.
The policemen declared that the operation started at 4:30 p.m. and that they seized 38 kilograms of shabu (crystal meth).
The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, however, determined that the operation started at 10 a.m. and yielded 200 kilograms of shabu, with the intervening time being used to mount a cover-up.
The Senate committee reported that two witnesses, the caretaker of Lee’s house and the buyer of Lee’s car, had both died and could no longer testify. Meanwhile, Lee and two poseur-buyers had gone missing.
The draft report recommended that “the Bureau of Immigration must ensure that all those who enter our country are those whose intentions are not criminal or degenerate.”
The justice department is re-investigating the 2013 operation against Lee.
