THE Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7) is validating reports that Cebuano businessman Peter Lim has left the country.
Chief Supt. Noli Taliño, PRO-7 director, said they so far have no idea about Lim’s whereabouts.
“I’m waiting for the report from our operatives,” he told reporters yesterday.
While there was no directive from the Philippine National Police headquarters in Manila to look for Lim, Taliño said the regional police would want to know whether the controversial businessman is still in the Philippines.
Lim’s lawyer Pedro Leslie Salva said he had no idea whether or not his client was in the country.
“I have not talked to him so I do not know if he is the country or on a business trip abroad,” he said in a text message to Cebu Daily News.
President Rodrigo Duterte had identified a certain Peter Lim as among the big-time drug lords in the country.
Last July 15, the Cebuano businessman personally met with President Duterte in Davao City to clear his name.
Lim denied that he was the alleged Chinese-Filipino drug dealer alluded to in police intelligence reports.
He appeared before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Manila last July 21 as advised by President Duterte.
Lim, 69, was the same person that the House of Representatives committee on dangerous drugs investigated in 2001 for the same allegations.
But the committee found no sufficient evidence to prove the accusations.
The NBI has formed a special task force that would focus on Lim’s case.
Joel Tovera, head of the Bureau’s Anti-Illegal Drugs Division, is on top of the investigation.
Director General Isidro Lapeña of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA-7) had said that the Cebuano businessman was on their target list.