EXCLUSIVE: Fearing a ‘set up,’ Trillanes rejects meeting with Guban
He had a sense of foreboding that the meeting could be a trap.
Former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV declined an invitation to meet with Jimmy Guban, a former Customs intelligence officer, in 2018. Guban recently told the House of Representatives’ quad-committee that former President Rodrigo Duterte’s son, son-in-law, and Chinese economic adviser were allegedly behind the P11 billion drug shipment in 2018.
Guban, who is being held at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) after being convicted of conspiring to import 355 kilos of shabu in connection with the 2018 drug case, tried to reach out and set up a meeting with Trillanes that year.
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In an interview with Inquirer Mobile, Trillanes recalled declining to see Guban “because I did not have a good feeling about it and apparently my intuition was right because had I met up with him, I would have been set up.”
Trillanes made a specific reference to Guban’s testimony before the quad-committee last month in which Guban claimed that Jun Vicente de Guzman allegedly told him to incriminate the former senator, the archenemy of Mr. Duterte, for the illegal drug shipment in exchange for his release from jail. De Guzman was the deputy director of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) at the time.
Guban said the conversation took place on a phone call with De Guzman while he was being transferred from the NBI’s custody to the Manila City Jail in 2018.
“I was asking how they can help me get out,” Guban told the quad committee. “(De Guzman) was saying that the director (former NBI director Dante Gierran) advised that I sign an NBI report (implicating) the ex-senator. That I would walk free if I signed it.”
After Guban’s Senate testimony in 2018, Trillanes said he had not heard of him again until last month when the latter became a surprise witness for the House quad-committee, which is looking into the links between illegal drugs, Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos), and extrajudicial killings during the Duterte administration.
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Plot to implicate Trillanes, De Lima
But Trillanes was not surprised by Guban’s testimony that the latter was asked by NBI officials to implicate him in the drug shipment, noting that the Duterte administration was “consistent with their plan to put me away.”
He mentioned that in 2017, the previous administration tried to implicate him in the murder of a drug lord at the NBP. Trillanes recalled that the convict, who fatally stabbed the Chinese drug trafficker, even produced an affidavit stating that he was following the instructions given to him by the former senator through a phone call. “How can that be possible? I called you on the phone and you followed my order? And I don’t even know you from Adam,” he said.
Trillanes was referencing the September 2016 stabbing of three high-profile drug lords at the NBP, which caused the death of one of them. At that time, then Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said that an inmate had linked Trillanes and then Sen. Leila de Lima to the stabbing incident but added that there was no evidence to prove their involvement.
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But that was just the beginning of Trillanes’ political persecution under the Duterte administration.
Trillanes revealed that there was also an attempt to implicate him in a kidnapping case that allegedly happened in 2016. In 2019, Trillanes was subpoenaed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) after police filed kidnapping with serious illegal detention charges against him, lawyer Jude Sabio, and two others, in connection with the case involving a woman who claimed she was held by the former senator and his group to force her to testify against then President Rodrigo Duterte. The case was dismissed in 2022.
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Trillanes said the last attempt to put him away was when Duterte revoked the amnesty granted to him by the late President Benigno Aquino III in 2010 for leading the 2003 Oakwood mutiny and the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege. The reason given by Mr. Duterte was that Trillanes failed to comply with the amnesty requirements. Last April, the Supreme Court affirmed the validity of the amnesty grant on Trillanes and said Duterte cannot revoke it without congressional concurrence.
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In his August 16 testimony, Guban accused Davao City First District Rep. Paolo “Polong” Duterte, lawyer Manases “Mans” Carpio—husband of Vice President Sara Duterte—and former presidential economic adviser Michael Yang of being behind the smuggling of “shabu” (crystal meth) from China six years ago.
However, by implicating Rep. Duterte and others, Guban had to recant his earlier testimony in a Senate inquiry in 2018 that it was former Police Col. Eduardo Acierto who directed him to look for a consignee for the magnetic lifters used to conceal the shabu.
Rep. Duterte has denied knowing Guban. “I do not know Jimmy Guban and I’m sure that he does not know me. We have no transaction whatsoever or any connection. That’s why I have no reason to threaten him if he name-drops me,” said the congressman in a statement. He said Guban “has no credibility and that his statements have no basis even back then, that’s why I do not know why he is being treated as a star witness here. I also want to see his sworn affidavit so that me and my lawyer can study it.” Carpio also belied Guban’s allegations, saying they were baseless and false.
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Fear factor
Asked what he thought of Guban’s new testimony about the shabu shipment, Trillanes said he would like to believe that the former Customs official was telling the truth.
“(This is) because there is no longer a fear element. If his reason for telling a lie (back then) was fear for his life, now there is a reason for him to tell the truth because there is no longer a fear factor hovering over his head,” Trillanes said of Guban, and added: “Duterte is no longer in power and it’s evident that he is fair game now.”
Trillanes said that Guban and Acierto’s testimonies on the 2018 drug shipment could be validated or invalidated once the quad-committee summons Davao City Councilor Nilo “Small” Abellera Jr., whom Trillanes included in a drug smuggling case he recently filed against Rep. Duterte, Carpio and other personalities before the DOJ.
Trillanes noted that even if Guban and Acierto were involved in the shipment, he was still puzzled how they managed to import it from China.
“Who is their drug lord contact?” he asked.
Opportunity for redemption
On whether Guban was taking a risk in his latest testimony before the quad-committee, Trillanes said this was “the only opportunity for redemption” on the part of the former Customs official. “Can you believe he was convicted for that drug case? Can you imagine someone like Guban would be able to import that amount of shabu?” Trillanes said, noting a “persecution angle” against Guban.
Trillanes expressed doubt that the Marcos administration was behind Guban’s latest testimony, given the collapse of the unity team between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte. The former senator said the administration only wanted people to tell the truth.
On claims by Duterte allies that the quad-committee was out to get the former President, Trillanes said that it was in “pursuit of justice.” The quad committee has so far identified witnesses who also linked Mr. Duterte to the killing of three Chinese drug lords inside the Davao Prison and Penal Farm in 2016.
Col. Jovie Espenido also testified in the quad-committee last week that reward money for police officers enforcing President Duterte’s drug war allegedly came from, among others, Pogos, which flourished under his administration. President Marcos has since imposed a ban on Pogos for their involvement in crimes such as financial scams, human trafficking, murders and kidnappings.
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