The Philippine National Police will ask the Anti-Money Laundering Council to conduct a financial investigation on its personnel assigned to the PNP-Drug Enforcement Group as part of efforts to weed out so-called ninja cops involved in illegal activities.
Ninja cops are those suspected of involvement in returning to the black market their confiscated illegal drugs.
At least 20 more members of the anti-narcotics unit of the PNP were relieved from their posts as part of a continuing internal cleansing, bringing the total number of cops sacked to 117.
“This is on-going as part of our internal cleansing. We need to make sure that those who would be assigned in PDEG must be clean,” PDEG director Brig. Gen. Faro Antonio Olaguera said.
“We will also file a request before the AMLC for necessary financial investigation of other personnel involved,” Olaguera added.
PDEG has at least 1,363 personnel, more than half of whom were assigned in 17 of its Special Operations Units (SOUs).
PNP chief Gen. Benjamin Acorda Jr. earlier said he was weighing options on the fate of the SOUs involved in the anti-illegal drugs campaign.
Acorda said he was carefully studying the reforms amid controversies that hounded the SOUs, specifically in the conduct of buy-bust operations on the basis of information supplied by confidential informants or sources in the underground.
“We have been monitoring these personalities, those scalawags, and my
instruction after hearing those adjudications is that intel operatives will actually work to make sure that they don’t do anything stupid anymore,” Acorda said.
At least two generals and two colonels are facing administrative and criminal charges for their alleged links to the illegal drug trade, while 32 senior officers face further investigation.
