By Ferdinand Patinio/Philippine News Agency
MANILA — An official of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) on Thursday said they have no record of a certain Zhijian Xu alias Jacky Co, the Chinese national tagged by Senator Panfilo Lacson as behind a multi-billion illegal drug shipment to the country.
BI spokesperson Dana Sandoval said based on their initial verification, they found no record of any “derogatory hit” by the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) on the foreigner.
“After we heard about it yesterday (Wednesday), Commissioner Jaime Morente immediately ordered an investigation to know the details of the case. We have initial verification with the name Zhijian Xu alias Jacky Co and we saw no Interpol derogatory hit. He has many namesakes in travel records but none of them matched with the person Sen. Lacson mentioned in his privilege speech,” the BI official said in an interview.
“We are verifying that this might be an alias. We are checking the records of all the names of those who left that day, (April 3),” she added.
Sandoval noted that they will coordinate with the office of the senator to identify the person.
“The BI would coordinate with Sen. Lacson’s office to gather more information about this case to pinpoint this person. If he is indeed a foreign national, we could use this to initiate deportation proceedings against him. But so far, no person bearing such name left the country on such date based on our records,” she said in Filipino.
She added that they will also coordinate with other government agencies to be able to gather more information on the Chinese national.
“We have other sources of records. We would also expand (our) investigation. We would ask PDEA (Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency) and other intel agencies in the Philippines. Maybe they have information on the identity of Jacky Co,” she added.
On Wednesday, Lacson said in a privilege speech that the Chinese national was behind the PHP1.8-billion shabu shipment seized at the Manila International Container Port last March.
He added that the foreigner is on the Interpol watchlist, and is wanted in China.
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