Peter Lim
Prove it.
This was the challenge hurled by the lawyer of Cebuano businessman Peter Lim to the head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) who claimed that his client was the same Peter Lim who was involved in the illegal drugs trade.
“Let them prove it. It’s not our obligation to prove the innocence of my client because the Constitution says anyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” said lawyer Pedro Leslie Salva.
He said he was wondering why PDEA director general Isidro Lapeña implicated his client to illegal drugs operations only now.
“Where was he (Lapeña) during the time of PNoy (President Benigno Aquino III)? Why didn’t he mention it?” he said.
Salva pointed out even President Rodrigo Duterte admitted that there was no evidence linking Lim in the illegal drugs trade.
“That’s more than enough to prove what I’m talking about, and I don’t think the President is irresponsible enough to make such statement,” he said.
In an interview over ABS-CBN’s late evening newscast “Bandila” on Thursday, Lapeña said the businessman was in their target list.
But Lapeña said they could not arrest Lim since there was no existing arrest warrant issued against the businessman.
Yogi Filemon Ruiz, PDEA director for Central Visayas, said he had heard about Lim’s alleged involvement in illegal drugs trade since the early 2000s when the businessman and his brother, Wellington, were subjects of a congressional inquiry after their names were placed on the police watch list of top drug personalities in the country.
“I’m not new to my job, and this is not the first time I heard about him (Cebu’s Peter Lim),” he said.
When he assumed his post as PDEA-7 director on Thursday, Ruiz showed reporters a folder that he said contained the names of the top drug personalities in Cebu and other parts of Central Visayas.
He said he could not reveal the list as it was still “confidential.”
But Ruiz said Lim’s name was not among those that PDEA-7 is pursuing.
“What I have are the names of the ‘new’ top drug personalities in the cities and provinces in Central Visayas as product of intelligence works by PDEA, the police and the National Bureau of Investigation,” he said.
Ruiz said Lapeña named Lim because the businessman had long been dragged into the illegal drugs trade.
“Whatever data our director has is also what I got,” he said.
Ruiz said he was just waiting for any directive from Lapeña to assist in investigating Lim.
“There’s an ongoing investigation against Lim before the NBI, and I don’t want to meddle in that because it might be construed as ‘pasikat’ (being a show-off). And if I conduct an investigation, it might be redundant with what NBI is doing. What if the outcome of the two investigations are different?” he said.
Lim appeared before the NBI in Manila last July 21 after President Duterte advised him to subject himself to a probe to clear his name amid allegations that he was one of the three big-time drug lords in the country.
Lim has said his family’s life has been placed in danger because of all the allegations made against him.
Lim, 69, was the same person who was investigated in 2001 by the House of Representatives Committee on Dangerous Drugs over his alleged links with an international drug cartel. The committee found no sufficient evidence to prove the accusations.
In the wake of the President’s revelation naming a Peter Lim as one the country’s top drug lords, the NBI formed a special task force led by Joel Tovera, head of the Bureau’s Anti-Illegal Drugs Division, that would focus on Lim’s case.