Richard Tan
Richard Tan is just a forwarder. The heat is on him because he’s the convenient excuse.”
This was the defense of the camp of Chinese businessman Richard Tan, who was described by the Senate blue ribbon committee as the one “ultimately responsible” for the P6.4-billion “shabu” shipment that entered the country.
Lawyer Abraham Gutoc, legal counsel of Tan, defended his client after the blue ribbon committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon, pinned the blame on Tan over the importation of illegal drugs last May, the biggest drug haul under President Rodrigo Duterte’s leadership.
“It’s really unfair to call him the ultimate responsible. He’s basically not the proximate nor the ultimate cause why P6.4-billion worth of shabu entered the Philippines,” Gutoc said in an interview with Inquirer.
“Some unscrupulous people only used his company to bring in drugs here, but did he know about these drugs? Of course not,” he said.
Those criminally responsible, the lawyer added, are the ones who actually sent out the drugs, who availed the services of Tan’s forwarding company Hong Fei Logistics.
If the government is serious in its war on drugs, Gutoc said the Senate report should “highlight who the real criminals are.”
“There should be a directive to search for these people,” he said.
Gordon’s committee report, which is currently being routed at the Senate for signing by the senators, said that Tan was responsible for the shipment of drugs from Xiamen, China.
“The committee finds that the ultimate responsibility for the importation of these illegal drugs fall squarely on the shoulders of (Tan) as owner of Hong Fei Logistics,” Gordon’s committee said in its report which Inquirer first obtained.
“After all, the intent to commit the crime is not indispensable since the act committed of is mala prohibita. Hong Fei Logistics, no doubt, facilitated the importation of the said illegal drugs,” it said.
A day before the May 26 raid, Wang Xi Dong, a Customs police officer in Xiamen, China informed Tan that the five insulator machines delivered to his warehouse in Valenzuela City contained drugs.