Police foils attempt to extort P1M from Husky Bus management

SULTAN KUDARAT --- Agents nabbed in a payoff entrapment Thursday a leader of an extortion gang that attempted to collect P1 million from a bus company plying the Cotabato-General Santos route.Senior Supt. Raul Supiter, director of the Sultan Kudarat provincial police, said the 43-year-old Jerry Ibrahim was arrested in Datu Saudi town in Maguindanao while receiving from a courier a package containing dummy paper bills.Ibrahim’s entrapment was carried out by the Sultan Kudarat provincial police based on a report by the management of the Husky Bus that a group was asking for P1 million protection money, threatening to burn down its units if its demand is ignored.Several drivers and conductors of Husky buses had been harassed while in secluded stretches of the Cotabato-General Santos Highway in Maguindanao in recent months by gunmen obviously out to force its operator into paying cash on monthly basis.Supiter said the operation that led to the arrest of Ibrahim was assisted by the Maguindanao provincial police office, the Army’s 2ndMechanized Battalion and intelligence agents from the Army’s 601stBrigade and the 6thInfantry Division. The arrested suspect is now in our custody, to be prosecuted very soon for his criminal offense, Supiter said.The operator of Husky buses, the Biocrest Multi-purpose Cooperative, on Friday issued a statement appreciating the prompt action by the office of Supiter on their problem.Supiter said they succeeded in their entrapment operation due to the cooperation of the bus company in locating Ibrahim, a dispatcher of passenger vehicles at the municipal terminal of Datu Saudi in southwest of Maguindanao.