The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has found that the first and so-called smuggled coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines that arrived in the country did not pass through the Bureau of Customs (BOC), Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said on Thursday, March 25.
(TOTO LOZANO / PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO / FILE PHOTO)
“One thing I noted in the initial NBI report: no findings that the early COVID vaccines went through the customs area,” Guevarra told journalists covering the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“They might have been brought in in convenient packages,” he said.
He suspected that the smuggled vaccines may have been brought in “in a luggage, carry-on bag, etc.” and “maybe through a private flight too.”
“But the NBI has not specified these,” he noted.
Last Jan. 4, Guevarra directed the NBI “to conduct an investigation on the reported importation, sale, offering for sale, distribution, administration, and inoculation of COVID-19 vaccines that are not authorized by or registered with the Food and Drug Administration of the Philippines, and, if evidence warrants, to file the appropriate charges against all persons involved and found responsible for any unlawful act in connection therewith.”
The order was issued following Presidential Security Group (PSG) Commander Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante III admission that members of the PSG got vaccinated to better protect President Duterte from getting infected with COVID-19.
But Guevarra had said that the NBI investigation was not prompted by reports about the PSG’s use of the COVID-19 vaccine.