ANOTHER DRUG LAB FOUND IN NAVOTAS

AUTHORITIES on Thursday night raided a "shabu" (crack) warehouse in
Navotas town barely three days after a big drug laboratory was
discovered in the adjacent town of Valenzuela Monday, National Bureau
of Investigation (NBI) director Reynaldo Wycoco said.

The warehouse in Navotas contained enough chemicals and other
materials to produce shabu worth one billion pesos, Wycoco said.

The raid came about after one of the employees of the Valenzuela shabu
laboratory informed the NBI that the chemicals used to make the
illegal drug were being stored in the warehouse on NorthBay Boulevard
in Navotas, he said.

Suspects Wang Yashi alias "Siyah" and Deng Xiao Li alias "Lucy," both
from mainland China, are said to be the operators of the drug
laboratory on Malinis Street in the village of Lawang Bato in
Valenzuela, which was accidentally discovered when fire broke out in
the premises, Wycoco said.

Lee Yuk Sau, alleged owner of the Valenzuela warehouse, went to the
Valenzuela police Friday with her lawyer and denied she was part of
the drug syndicate.

Police recovered 2.2 billion pesos' worth of shabu in the Valenzuela
warehouse, the largest-ever drug haul in the Philippines.

Officials put the value of the illegal drug trade in the Philippines
at 81.6 billion pesos annually.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, informed of the raid, said she
would ensure "that corrupt judges do not turn around the work of any
of these law enforcers, as some of them have done in some of these
cases."

Wycoco said he had ordered his men to find out why Wang, who was
arrested by Caloocan City policemen in October 2001, was again on the
loose.

Northern Police District Office (NPDO) director Marcelino Franco Jr.
said police received a call from a Conchita Chua, who claimed she was
an employee of suspects Wang Yashi and Deng Xiao Li.

"(Chua) decided to come to us to reveal what she knows about the
illegal trade after she learned that we are running after the suspects
who happened to be her employers," Franco said.

Chua told police that her employers had just arrived from China. She
also said she barely managed to escape the fire that gutted the
Valenzuela warehouse.

Franco said police had yet to determine whether Chua would be charged
as a suspect. "We have yet to find out the extent of her involvement
before we could say she is a suspect," he said.

Wycoco said the NBI confiscated six truckloads of "chemicals and
precursors" from the Navotas warehouse. They were taken to the Crime
Laboratory in the Camp Crame national police headquarters in Quezon
City.

Wycoco said his investigators learned that the warehouse started
operating in November 2001.

NBI agents had to wait for more than three hours Thursday for a search
warrant from a judge before they could enter the Navotas warehouse.

"We don't want to waste a very important operation by getting evidence
that will be inadmissible in court," Wycoco said.