Manila: An anti-crime group is offering a bounty of one million Philippine pesos (Dh83,333) for information on the whereabouts of a driver, lover and aide to the country’s former justice secretary.

Ronnie Palisoc Dayan — the lover and bagman to then justice secretary Leila de Lima — allegedly protected drug lords and allowed them to continue their trade at the national prison in Metro Manila’s suburban Muntinglupa (not Taguig).

“Several businessmen gave us P1 million so the police can give the money to those who give information on the whereabouts of Ronnie Palisoc Dayan,” Attorney Ferdie Topacio said during a press conference at the Kamuning Bakery Café in suburban Quezon City on Tuesday.

“Dayan was charged with contempt of court for not appearing at the hearing of the committee on justice of the House of Representatives which investigated Senator de Lima’s alleged participation in the illegal drug trade at the NBP,” Topacio said, adding the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) received the money last Sunday from donors “who wanted the truth on the extent of narco-politics in the Philippines”.

Earlier, de Lima admitted in a TV interview that Dayan was her lover for two years — when she was justice secretary.

At the House hearings. several Filipino convicts who have been serving time at the NBP said Dayan urged them in 2013 to raise funds for the election of de Lima as a senator ahead of the May 2016 elections.

Dayan was always around when they sent money to de Lima, all of them claimed.

The convicts admitted raising funds by selling drugs, which they sourced from convicted Chinese drug lords who occasionally traded drugs at the NBP.

Some of them said they were allowed to host concerts, sell tickets for NBP shows, and liquor at those events.

They paid protection money and a percentage of funds raised from their productions to de Lima and some prison authorities, they added.

One convicted robber said prison authorities allowed him to bring in models to cater to the rich convicted Chinese drug lords at the NBP.

In December 2013, de Lima ordered the transfer of 17 of 19 convicted drug lords from NBP to the jail of the National Bureau of Investigation in Manila.

She accused them of bringing to the NBP appliances, firearms, mobile phones, money, and sex dolls.

She accused prison authorities of allowing convicts to install CCTV’s, construct high-end private residences, including a music room at the NBP complex, but did not mention that the illegal drug trade proliferated there. In July 2014, she ordered the convicted drug lords to return to NBP’sother secured building.

Earlier, President Rodrigo Duterte identified de Lima as a top protector of convicted drug lords. Social media showed her at parties hosted by convicted drug lords at the prison.

A video clip of one of those parties showed her singing, in an inmate’s costume, and making a high-five gesture with one inmate.

Local and foreign rights groups have criticised Duterte for the death of 4,000 in his drug-war since July. The police said drug syndicates were responsible for more than half of the killings.

The trade of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu), marijuana, ephedrine, and methylenedioxy methamphetamine (MDMA or Ecstasy) in the Philippines reached $8.4 billion in 2013, reports said.

Nine Chinese drug cartels, the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, West African, and North Korean drug syndicates have been smuggling drugs into the Philippines for transshipment to Asian countries. They have used overseas Filipino workers as drug mules. Chinese drug syndicates have been renting apartments, condominiums, houses in private subdivisions, and warehouses to manufacture shabu in the Philippines.

The Philippines has become a trans-shipment point and a key producer of synthetic drugs for all of Asia, the Manila-based Pacific Strategies & Assessments said in 2009. The Philippines has the highest rate of shabu abuse, said the UN Drug Report in 2011. About 20.51 per cent or 8,629 villages out of 42,065 villages nationwide are plagued with drug menace; 92.10 per cent of villages in Metro Manila; and 33.78 per cent of villages in southern Luzon have drug problems, authorities said.

.