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The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) on Monday, February 1, froze the properties and bank accounts of convicted drug personalities Rico Bacon and Mary Ann Toledo Bacon.
AMLC had previously issued order CA-G.R. AMLA 00256 on November 4, 2020 to freeze the husband and wife’s assets.
Art Baculi, head of the AMLC’s anti-drug trafficking subgroup, said 19 real properties of the Bacons were affected: 11 in Misamis Oriental, 5 in Cagayan de Oro City, and one in Manila. The council also froze 14 of their bank accounts carrying hundreds of millions of pesos.
Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Director General Wilkins Villanueva said that based on their investigation, the Bacons had a front business in construction, and had declared “about P19,000 only in income.”
In 2017, at the height of martial law in Mindanao due to the terror attack in Marawi City, the Martial Law Special Action Group (ML-SAG) raided the Bacons’ house in Apovel Subdivision, Barangay Patag and confiscated drugs, firearms, and explosives.
The Bacons, along with a Virgilio Toleda, were convicted on April 23, 2019 and sentenced to life imprisonment for drugs possession and reclusion perpetua for illegal possession of firearms and explosives.
Baculi said that they would file civil forfeiture cases against the Bacons, which will preserve their properties and keep them from being sold.
“We are choking their money, and during the investigation of AMLC, they now can see the interactions of the players (in the drug trade),” Villanueva said.
PDEA Region 10 Director Emerson Rosales said that the male Bacon is one of the leaders of the Kuratong Baleleng drug group, and that the PDEA is also going after other bosses of the group.
AMLC had also frozen the assets and properties of former Ozamis City mayor Reynaldo Parojinog and his daughter former vice mayor Nova Princess Parojinog. The elder Parojinog was killed with 11 others in a series of bloody police raids in July 2017.
The Parojinogs were accused of being major drug lords by President Rodrigo Duterte. – Rappler.com
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