(Eagle News)–President Rodrigo Duterte will defer taking any action following the allegations against Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Albayalde and 13 policemen who were ordered dismissed but were later only demoted for engaging in the recycling of illegal drugs.
Before leaving for Russia on Tuesday night, Duterte said he would wait for the joint Senate panel to complete its probe first.
He said he would then submit the Senate panel report to Interior Secretary Eduardo Año, and give him a period within which to conduct a review of the report.
He said Año’s recommendation would be the basis for him to “dismiss, discharge, terminate any and all of them.”
As it is though, Duterte said he believes in the case of Albayalde that the PNP chief’s “only link na ‘yung mga tao na ‘yon were under his command, up to that point.”
Former Criminal Investigation and Detection Group chief Benjamin Magalong has said that based on a CIDG probe, the 13 policemen then led by Col. Rodney Baloyo presented to the media only 30 kilograms of the 200 kilograms they had supposedly seized during a raid in a house in Mexico, Pampanga in November 2013.
The probe, he said, also found they presented to the media a foreign national different from the one they supposedly nabbed during the raid.
Magalong said the probe was conducted upon orders by then-PNP chief Alan Purisima, who had supposedly received reports of Pampanga policemen getting sport utility vehicles following the controversial raid.
Magalong said according to Purisima, Albayalde, who was the Pampanga director at that time, was one of those who got an SUV, but Albayalde denied this, saying his vehicle at that time was merely an “old pick-up.”
