EXPLOSION: A bomb squad unit policeman from the Mandaue City Police Office searches under the vehicles that were damaged by an improvised bomb that was lobbed at dawn on Thursday, July 5, 2018, at the Hilton Heavy Equipment office located in Barangay Subangdaku, Mandaue City and owned by controversial businessman Peter Lim.
CEBU businessman Peter Lim will ask the help of the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) to identify the persons who set off two improvised explosive devices outside an establishment he owned in Mandaue City on Thursday.
Jun Fuentes, Lim’s spokesperson, said that Lim will personally appear before the NBI-7 to file a formal complaint.
“Grabe siya kabalaka. (He was very worried),” Fuentes told Cebu Daily News on Friday.
Lim, he said, will return to Cebu from Manila to address what appeared to be threats to his life.
Last Thursday’s explosion at the display area of Hilton Motors Corporation in Barangay Subangdaku, Mandaue City was the second time in a week that Lim’s properties had been attacked.
It has also been three months since an attempt was made on the life of Lim’s younger brother, Wellington, last March.
NBI-7 Director Patricio Bernales Jr. said they could help in the investigation but ruled out
providing security escorts to Lim or the businessman’s family.
“All the NBI can do is to investigate. We don’t have the manpower to secure him. Anyway, there are lots of agencies out there where he can secure the services of bodyguards,” he said in an interview.
As of Friday afternoon, Lim has not filed a formal complaint at the NBI yet.
“Let’s see the nature of his complaint,” he said.
Scare tactic
Chief Insp. Mercy Villaro, information officer of the Mandaue City Police Office, said investigators believed that the explosion at Hilton Motors was not meant to hurt anybody since the explosive devices used were not powerful enough.
“Perhaps, it was just intended to scare someone,” she said.
An inter-agency task force composed of the police’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Canine Group, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Central Visayas, and the Mandaue City Police Office are conducting a probe to determine the motive behind the blast and to identify the perpetrators.
Villaro said there’s a possibility that that the explosion had something to do with a labor dispute, as explained by the management of Hilton Motors.
She said there may be disgruntled employees who were mad at Lim.
But investigators were not discounting the possibility that the explosion was related to drug accusations against Lim, Villaro said,
Shortly after he assumed his post, President Rodrigo Duterte publicly identified Lim as a big-time drug lord, a claim the businessman strongly denied.
Assessment process
The Department of Justice is conducting an investigation to validate the President’s claim against Lim.
Villaro said the police can provide security aides to Lim as long as there is a formal request and an approval from Camp Crame.
“Any request shall be assessed, and its up to our higher ups to approve it,” she said.
Just last June 30, three armed men disarmed the security guard of Infinity KTV & Music Lounge in Archbishop Reyes Ave., Cebu City — a bar owned by Lim’s younger brother Wellington — and tried to set the establishment on fire.
Last March 23, unidentified men also fired at a vehicle reportedly driven by Wellington as he was leaving the Infinity carpark.
Wellington was unharmed but a security guard was killed while another security guard and two foreigners who happened to pass by during the shooting were wounded.