Mark Ruben Taguba II was a young businessman only in his twenties when he established a trucking business. He named his business the Golden Strike Logistics, Inc. His family came from Piat, Cagayan where his father Ruben once served as vice mayor.
Among his trucking transactions was to transport import shipments from the Manila International Container Port and the Port of Manila. His trucks would then deliver these to their intended warehouses. For this he entered into a tactical collaboration with two other business people.
Eirene Mae Tatad was a registered consignee for the Bureau of Customs. For every shipment that Taguba transported out of the ports, Tatad’s EMT Trading Company would get a royalty fee as a consignee for hire. The other partner was beneficial to the arrangement because Taguba himself was no customs broker. That was a customs broker named Teejay Marcellana.
Taguba came into national consciousness because of a high profile Senate investigation in 2017. In July of that year, the Senate passed Resolution No. 425 filed by then senator Richard Gordon to investigate a large shipment of shabu worth P6.4B. The Bureau of Customs had released the shipment. It was then intercepted at a Valenzuela city warehouse. The resolution was referred to the Senate’s Blue Ribbon Committee that Gordon himself chaired.
Initially, the investigation unraveled a so-called tara system operating within the BOC. The tara was colloquial for grease money paid to many departments within the BOC to facilitate the entry of container cargo. With the tara, shippers’ cargo would be allowed to pass through the green lane – a fast lane where there was no physical and document inspection of cargo. Gordon’s committee estimated the amount the Customs officials were on the take from tara to total about P98.5 billion yearly.
Who paid the tara? It was the shippers or consignees. That was the reason why Mark Taguba was called in by the Senate as a resource person. His presence in the hearing was strategic – Taguba would average about 100 containers per week.
In the Senate, Taguba showed text messages and call logs he made to several division heads in the BOC. He bared that at one two-week period, he withdrew more than P25 million from the bank to finance his tara to these division heads to facilitate 207 containers. One text message sent to him said: “Happy morning po . . . remind po ni sir Joel ung kay director at sa kanya . . . fyi.” Joel was Joel Pinawin, chief of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service.
Based on short messaging records seen by then senator Panfilo Lacson, Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon himself was benefitting from the tara in the amount of P50,000 for every shipment. Faeldon was a known Rodrigo Duterte fair-haired boy.
While the P6.4 billion shabu mess was still under investigation, Duterte removed Faeldon from the BOC in August 21, 2017. It turned out to be only a show — no charges were filed against Faeldon. In November of 2018, Duterte instead gave him another responsibility as director-general of the Bureau of Corrections.
How did Mark Taguba’s shipments that he had trucked out of the ports fared? Not only was he told to pay the tara. One day, he received a message from a Tita Nanie (they would later meet face to face). The mysterious Tita instructed him to become part of the Davao Group. Tita Nanie’s message told Taguba: “Good am Mark. Will make final arrangement with Jack. He is the handler of Paolo. Now we have to advance him the 1 million. He can fly down to Davao to arrange your meeting with Pulong ASAP. During the meeting you personally turn over the 5 million same manner you turn over the 1 million to Jack when we meet.”
In the Lacson list, it was the Davao Group group that was the second among the big player shippers passing through the BOC (80-100 containers per day for the Davao Group). But to do that, Taguba was told to pay a “tuition fee” of P5M, and that the payment will have to be personally handed in Davao city.
And so off he flew to Davao city and met with a city councilor named Small Abellera. Abellera received the P5M tuition fee and told Taguba that he will hand it over to Paolo Duterte. The son Duterte was vice mayor at that time. Abellera admitted in the Senate that he met with Taguba in Davao city in Casa de Amigos resto-bar. Taguba also testified that he gave P2M to a certain Jack who introduced himself as a “handler” of Vice Mayor Duterte. Abellera said he knows Jack.
In both the Senate and the House’s Quad Committee hearings, Abellera said he did not receive any P5M from Taguba. But Taguba testified that after that meeting, all his shipments then passed through the green lane at Customs successfully. Prior to that Davao city meeting, Taguba’s shipments have had problems with the green lanes.
Taguba also revealed that in later text messages he would receive, the same Davao Group players also told him that presidential son in-law Mans Carpio was also part of the group and had influence over Customs shipments.
In September 2017, Abellera was reported missing. In December, Paolo Duterte resigned as vice mayor over his alleged link to a drug smuggling scandal.
Taguba had shaken the so-called Davao Group.
Under a Duterte power dynamics in the national scene, Taguba had entered his turning point: He spoke the truth about his knowledge of the Davao Group and linked Paolo Duterte and Mans Carpio to crime. He had crossed the Duterte line by making a confession at the time when the Dutertes were in national power. Naturally, what came next was Duterte vendetta.
In February 2018, the National Bureau of Investigation arrested Mark Taguba. His crime? Drug importation, a non-bailable crime. Eirene Mae Tatad was also arrested. Teejay Marcellana was at large. And here was the twist – all the Bureau of Customs officials from Faeldon down to division heads who were initially investigated by the NBI were removed from the arrest list. The Department of Justice itself had dismissed the complaint against Faeldon.
The main focus was on Taguba. The Duterte vendetta had been administered. He was showered with death threats, including death threats against his mother.
The shipper of the shabu shipment was a Red Chinese named Richard Tan (Chinese name Chen Ju Long). The shipment’s middleman in Manila was Kenneth Dong, a known Duterte friend whose real name was Dong Yi Shen. Dong was arrested in February 2019. He had admitted that he was a friend of Paolo Duterte.
Chen Ju Long owned the Valenzuela warehouse where the five crates of metal cylinders containing shabu were intercepted. Definitely he knew the shipment was shabu. He remains at large and is believed to have escaped to Red China. Dong Yi Shen also knew. But Taguba and Tatad had no knowledge there was shabu in the shipment. And neither did the warehouseman Fidel Anoche Dee know, who was also arrested and jailed. They were not part of the conspiracy to ship shabu.
Who else were jailed? Not Paolo Duterte. Not Mans Carpio. Not Nicanor Faeldon, Joel Pinawin and all the division heads in Customs involved in the Tara system.
Taguba and Tatad were convicted with life imprisonment. Who was the judge who convicted them? It was Judge Reinalda Estacio Montesa. She is the same judge of Manila Regional Trial Court 46 who convicted Maria Ressa and Rey Santos Jr. of cyberlibel for a Rappler article published in May 2012. On December 2, 2019, Rodrigo Duterte promoted the judge’s husband Jacob Montesa II as presiding judge of Makati RTC 63.
Mark Taguba was convicted of a crime he did not commit. He is now 33 years old. He has already spent six years of his young life in jail.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.