COTABATO CITY— Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency seized P3.4 million worth of shabu from a dealer entrapped in Marawi City on Tuesday.
Gil Cesario Castro, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, identified the now detained suspect as Arham Hadji Omar Alim, who will be prosecuted for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
Castro said that Alim was immediately arrested after selling to combined PDEA-BARMM agents and personnel of different units under the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous half a kilo of shabu, worth P3.4 million, in a tradeoff in Barangay Marawi Poblacion, Marawi City on Tuesday afternoon.
Marawi City is the capital of Lanao del Sur, one of the six provinces in the Bangsamoro region.
Castro said the sting that resulted in the arrest of Alim was premised on tips about his shabu peddling activities from Lanao del Sur provincial officials and Muslim religious leaders in Marawi City.
Vista Land [VLL 1.50, up 2.0%; 0% avgVol] [link] disclosed that its board has approved a P5 billion preferred shares offering, consisting of 50,000,000 Series 2 Preferred Shares priced at P100/share. VLL said that China Bank Capital and SB Capital will be joint lead underwriters on the deal. The company did not provide any information about the potential dividend or the timeline for the offer period and listing of the shares.
MB bottom-line: This prefs sale comes after VLL had to kill its disastrous attempt to sell $700 million in US Dollar-denominated bonds back in late January. Back then, VLL’s bonds were simply not shiny enough to compete with the yields of other (better) issuers. When it pulled the bonds there was an expectation that VLL would try again once rates had come down a bit, and while rates have not gone down, perhaps this smaller offering is intended to deal with whatever short-term needs the company has while it waits to make a bond offering at some future time when rates are lower.
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