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Michael Yang and Allan Lim are close associates of former President Rodrigo Duterte.
In 2017, when Duterte was at the apex of his political career, Police Colonel Eduardo Acierto thought he was doing him a big favor by writing a report detailing his friends’ connections to illegal drugs. Duterte could have been clueless about the shady character of the company he was keeping.
Acierto thought wrong. Duterte went against him instead.
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The Philippine National Police linked Acierto to illegal drug smuggling. His fellow police officer Lito Perote, who also investigated Yang and Lim’s drug connections, was abducted by armed men in Bacolod. Perote was never seen again and is now presumed dead.
The House QuadComm hearings confirmed that Acierto’s drug links had been manufactured.
Jimmy Guban, who used to be an intelligence officer at the Bureau of Customs, admitted that he feared for his life and lied in the Senate when he pointed to Acierto as the importer of magnetic lifters containing illegal drugs that were intercepted in 2018.
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According to Guban, the actual owners of the shipment were Michael Yang, Polong Duterte and Mans Carpio.
Of course, everybody knows that Polong is a congressman representing the first district of Davao City and is a son of the former President. Carpio is his son-in-law. He is the husband of then Davao Mayor now Vice President Sara Duterte.
The twin criminal operations of Yang and Lim thrived exponentially under the regime of their pal Duterte.
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How does one launder billions of pesos generated through illegal drug operations?
Michael Yang’s corporate layering famously started with the incorporation of Davao City Los Amigos (DCLA) Plaza, identified as a business front in the affidavit that Arturo Lascañas submitted to the International Criminal Court.
He also incorporated the Yangtze Group Trade, Inc. together with his brother Hong Jiang Yang.
DCLA and Tangtze are part owners of the Paili estate group that constructed the Clark Majestic World in Pampanga.
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Allan Lim, on the other hand, is Weixiong Lin in real life.
His Filipina wife is Rose Nono Lin who happens to be an incorporator of several corporations where Michael Yang is also an important personality. As mentioned, one of these companies is the Paili estate group where some Vietnamese and Chinese nationals were found by the police to have been kidnapped.
Alan Lim’s wife is connected with Xionwei Technologies — an offshore gaming company that was inaugurated at the start of the Duterte administration.
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Xionwei is Allan Lim’s Chinese name read backwards. It is a POGO company that enriched its owners by washing dirty money via online casinos and scamming operations.
Yang and Lim’s corporations are involved in multi-billion-peso complexes that are in danger of seizure by the Philippine government.
They invested so much money in businesses that they thought would continue to operate under President Bongbong Marcos. They must be biting their elbows for allowing themselves to think that the current administration is as jaded as the one that extolled the Davao Group./WDJ