(Eagle News) — Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra has confirmed that former customs intelligence officer was indeed admitted to the Department of Justice’s Witness Protection Program (WPP).
“Yes, Mr. Guban has been admitted into the WPP. But that’s all that I can say,” he told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
Guevarra refused to give more details citing the “confidential” nature of the WPP.
Thank you for understanding the confidential nature and purpose of the WPP. Really appreciate it,” he said.
Guban’s transfer to the DOJ’s WPP was first recommended by Senator Richard Gordon in an ambush interview at the Senate.
This was after the hearing conducted by the Senate Blue Ribbon panel on the alleged shabu smuggling activities at the Bureau of Customs.
He said on Oct. 30 that he had already talked to DOJ’s Guevarra, citing the sensitive information that Guban knows.
He said Guban is not safe at the Senate detention, and should be better placed under WPP.
“He will be now turned over to the Secretary of Justice today. Delikado na siya dito (He is now in danger here),” Gordon said on Oct. 30.
He tagged Senior Supt. Eduardo Acierto in the illegal drugs shipment, as he had asked him for help in smuggling a shipment of shabu worth ₱2.4-billion contained in two magnetic lifters at the Manila International Container Port.
Guban was earlier also linked to the smuggling of four magnetic lifters which according to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had contained up to ₱11 billion worth of shabu. These lifters were found in a warehouse in Cavite last August.
Guban has been under Senate detention since September 11 after Gordon, the chair of the Blue-Ribbon committee, cited him for contempt for supposedly giving false testimony.
In his affidavit, Guban also vowed to to tell all regarding the twin PHP6.4 billion and the PHP 6.8 billion worth of shabu shipments that had slipped past the Customs bureau.
He said he would also reveal the widespread corruption at the Bureau of Customs.
“I am also executing this affidavit, being a witness to a crime, which I should have prepared a long time ago so that I myself would be guided accordingly whenever questions would be asked of me during the previous hearings both in the Philippine Senate and the House of Representatives,” he said.
Guban also detailed his participation in the apprehension of the first illegal shipment. He contradicted his earlier testimony that he himself was involved in the entry of the contraband – an admission that made President Rodrigo Duterte to order his arrest.
But Guban in his later affidavit read on Oct. 30, claimed that it was Acierto who had been directing the entry of the illegal drugs shipment.
He also detailed the participation of several key Bureau of Customs and PDEA personnel in the alleged smuggling and in the apprehension of the illegal drugs.
Guban said that he may have incriminated himself in his previous statements that made it appear he had made admissions to the crime.
He explained that this was “because of several reasons: among them was the lack of knowledge on the nature of the investigation and the stress brought by it; fear for my personal safety and family and my long confinement and detention.”
“Therefore, I myself, for more questions and inquiry, will answer them as much as I can in detail, and explain or clarify, if necessary, the details which are already available in the transcripts of the stenographic notes forming part of my statement in order to attain the desired outcome of this investigation,” Guban said. (with reports from Moira Encina, Meanne Corvera, Eagle News Service)