P400M shabu seized in Batangas drug lab raid

BATANGAS CITY, Philippines – A Chinese national and a Filipino couple were arrested in a Christmas Day raid of a clandestine shabu laboratory in Lipa City that netted over 80 kilos of the suspected prohibited drug valued to be around P400 million.

Supt. Christopher Birung, chief of the Batangas Philippine National Police (PNP) intelligence branch, said the raiding team, armed with a search warrant, swooped on the shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride) laboratory in a house on LPL Compound, Barangay (village) Inosluban, Lipa City, at 8:30 a.m. and found the drug and the paraphernalia used to make it.

Also inside the house and subsequently arrested were Gary Tan, a Chinese national, and couple Ar-Jay and Rochelle Argenos, the caretakers, Birung said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Tan is renting the house owned by a Jorge Torres. The house owner was not around during the raid, he said.

The arresting team was composed of elements from the PNP Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force (AIDSOTF), Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), and intelligence personnel from the Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) PNP, he said.

Three other suspects, identified only by their alias, “Al,” “Jamie” and “Joey” — all also allegedly involved in the drug laboratory operation — were also not around when the raiding team came, Birung said.

He said the arrested suspects and the seized drug as well as other pieces of evidence were brought to the AIDSOTF headquarters in Camp Crame, said Birung.