On May 16, 2002, an explosion occurred at the Evergreen Hotel in Davao City, particularly inside the room which was being stayed in by American oncologist, Michael Meiring who had reportedly been treasure hunting in the country since the 1990s. The explosion was caused by dynamite he was allegedly keeping inside the room.
However the case gets stranger because What made local authorities and media more curious was that the explosives found in the man’s hotel room was no ordinary dynamite. A police bomb expert claimed that it was a powerful high-tech explosive, which a mere treasure hunter would not need.
Sources said the device contained ammonium nitrate, electronic apparatus, and other explosive materials which can cause heavy explosion and damage.
The police said they recovered two boxes which reportedly contained Meiring’s “highly-confidential” documents. But more on that shortly.
Bomb experts theorized that the cover of the other box could have hit the box that contained the explosive and triggered the explosion. Meiring could have put the explosive inside the box to hurt anyone who was planning to open it.
Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said they knew little about the mysterious person. He said the man was an American and that the FBI agents may have been interested in him because of American federal notes seen in his room at the Evergreen Hotel.
Meiring was confined at the Davao Doctors Hospital after he sustained third-degree burns to over 40% of his body and had his legs amputated.
On May 19, 2002 Agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reportedly brought Meiring out of Davao City to Manila via Subic Air through chartered flight allegedly arranged by the US Embassy in Manila. By May 22, he was already confined at the Makati Medical Center which is one of the two hospitals accredited by Meiring's medical insurance. Meiring's insurance could not cover the American's bills at the Davao Medical Center which is reportedly the reason for his immediate transfer.
According to a local newspaper, US Vice Consul Michael Newbill himself and two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) fetched Meiring from Room 261 of the hospital.
Witnesses said that the men who took him from the hospital displayed F.B.I. badges. The hospital’s owner told reporters that he agreed to release Mr. Meiring despite his injuries after American officials promised to issue a work visa for his daughter, a nurse.
The FBI agents were said to have carried high-powered firearms. They showed their identification cards to the hospital physicians and instructed them not to let anyone know that they were taking Meiring out, said the report.
The US Embassy’s Public Affairs section quickly issued a denial the next day that the FBI had any role in the “disappearance” of Meiring, who claimed to be a “treasure hunter” but was the subject of an investigation on his possible link to terrorist groups.
Doctors amputated one of Mr. Meiring’s legs however in other reporting it states that they amputated both legs so its unclear which reporting on that is correct. but he was taken from the hospital and flown from Davao by charter plane, the police said at the time. He received medical treatment in Manila and left the country soon after.
Mr. Meiring returned to the United States, where he also went by the family name Vande-Meer. He died in 2012 at 76, public records show, without ever telling his story publicly.
Victim
Piecing together an accurate story about Meiring is difficult. But there are indications that he is part of a much bigger and much more spellbinding tale, one detailing with a quest for treasure, intrigue, involvement with Muslim terrorists, dealing in counterfeit securities and currency, and, possibly, double-cross by his long-time American and Filipino partners.
Michael Terrence Meiring is a former citizen of South Africa of British descent who reportedly fled the African country during the later years of the Apartheid era. He reportedly practiced his profession as a doctor for the South African police while being affiliated with the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela.
What is definitely known about Meiring is that he was born in 1932 in South Africa and later became a naturalized US citizen. He first came to the Philippines in 1992, where he spent almost a year in Metro Manila and North Luzon. He often stayed at the Sundowner Hotel or the Manila Garden Hotel in Makati (Where Steven Morgan resides) or the Park Hotel in Paco.
While in Manila he went around with two agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and has fallen under the protection of Ricardo Diaz, the NBI Chief of Interpol, and his treasure-hunting group, including Steven Morgan, Karl Ryll, Commander Tony Nasa, (MNLF) and PNP Colonel, Segundo Duran.
He was in the Philippines primarily to hunt for treasure and do research in herbal medicine. According to his wife, Angela, who is a nurse at a 7th Day Adventist hospital in Loma Linda, California. But the real facts of the case appear to be much more sinister.
It was learned that Meiring's wife Angela, who is in the United States (It has been reported that she came to the Philippines to assist in Meirings care and transport), had been telling Evergreen Hotel general manager Sarlo Gentapan that they don't have money. Gentapan served as a guarantor of the victim so he will be treated at the hospital. Gentapan told Sun Star that the hotel already released P20,000 as advanced payment for the hospitalization of the victim. Hughes confirmed that the victim was really financially strapped, saying, "Michael has no money, I know that." Gentapan said Angela told him over the phone that they are broke. However, Angela told Gentapan that Meiring is covered by health insurance in the United States.
Mr. Meiring called himself a treasure hunter and one source close to Meiring stated that he joked about being with the C.I.A., meaning “Christ in Action.” He told the hotel staff not to touch a metal box in his room, apparently with good reason.
Meiring, according to the post-blast affidavits of three employees of Evergreen hotel, was a frequent guest over the last 10 years, his latest check-in after nearly a year of absence, on December 14, 2001, carrying two heavy metal boxes.
The employees said Meiring would repeatedly tell them that in cleaning his room, they can touch anything but the two padlocked metal boxes which allegedly contained assorted documents. Meiring also instructed them to use only a “clean rag without any chemical materials.”
The Mindanao Times report a day after the blast quoted Mayor Rodrigo Duterte as saying the police investigated Meiring the Friday before (May 10), after the intelligence community found him “highly suspicious” for bringing in boxes in and out of the hotel.
Meiring was reported to have allowed local policemen to search his room but refused to let them enter his bathroom as it was supposedly “out of order”.
The case took another interesting turn because it turned out that Meiring had been under surveillance by police intelligence agents since May 10 when he was found in possession of fake US federal bank notes at the city’s fish port in the Toril district. The US were apparently even more interested to know where those federal notes came from because if he is spreading them around a foreign country that is tantamount to economic sabotage (on the part of the US government).
US authorities appeared interested in pursuing Meiring’s case after Philippine police authorities uncovered several dubious US Federal bank notes in his possession when they checked his room and belongings after the blast.
According to news reports, Mr. Meiring had been going to Davao City on the island of Mindanao for many years, usually staying in the same suite at the Evergreen. He had documents allowing him to hunt for treasure — which was believed to have been left by occupying Japanese forces during World War II — and an identity card allowing him to travel in territory held by separatist Islamic rebels.
At the time, the southern Philippines was plagued by armed conflict with the rebels and occasional bombings, including a blast a month earlier that killed 15 people in the city of General Santos, about 90 miles south of Davao City.
Several other bomb explosions had occurred in Cotabato, General Santos and even Manila, a number of them claimed by the shadowy Indigenous Peoples Federal Army which started making its presence felt in late December 2001, the Christian Lumad Nationalist Army which claimed responsibility for a bomb scare in Cotabato City on March 21, the Abu Muslim and Al Gzahi episodes in GenSan.
For two consecutive days, on May 14 and May 15, bomb threats forced the early adjournment of the regular session of the Davao City legislature and sent employees of around nine government agencies in the Council building scampering for safety.
No bomb was found on both days.
When the police first questioned Mr. Meiring about the explosion at the Evergreen, Meiring had told police officers while screaming in pain on May 16 that a man had lobbed a grenade inside his room. The evidence on the other hand pointed to the blast originating from one of his metal boxes. investigators quickly found conclusive evidence that the blast was caused by explosives in his room, according to the police file, including the remains of two 6-volt batteries, an electric blasting cap and a circuit board.
David Hawthorn, a close friend of Meiring claimed that his friend confessed of giving of a box of old US federal notes to the Mandela government. The box was one of 12 with each estimated to contain $500 million each. Meiring secured permits from the Fidel Ramos administration to hunt for treasure in sunken American and Japanese ships. He later partnered with a powerful Manila-based group which has links to James Rowe. According to American intelligence analyst Dan Crawford, Rowe himself is linked to a Nevada white supremacist and tax revolt group which has connection the Neo-Nazi Party in the United States and the Fifth Reich group of Germany.
Meiring's American friends suspected that the Manila group may have conspired against him. According to both Hawthorn and secretary Silvya Durante, Meiring was feared for his life who reportedly says "it has to do with the treasure”.
The other box contained partially burned documents that would unravel partly the mystery behind the man who called himself Michael Terence Meiring.
Among the documents found in the box was an “officer” identification card of the Moro National Liberation Front’s Bangsamoro Armed Forces, bearing Meiring’s name, photograph and September 17, 1935 as date of birth.
The Manila Times in a three-part report on May 29-31 said Meiring “had close ties to well-placed government authorities in southern Mindanao, national government officials and Philippine National Police, former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) chairman Nur Misuari, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chief Hashim Salamat and suspected New People’s Army (NPA) leader Father Navarro. Meiring also has close ties with `shady people’ like MNLF Commander Tony Nasa and others in Cotabato who acted as `front men’ for his dealings with the Abu Sayyaf.” in the purchase of US Treasury notes and in helping him in his search for sunken Japanese shipwrecks with Ryll and Morgan.
Meiring’s connections and dealings with rebel leaders made the military very wary about him. He was under surveillance by more than one intelligence unit on more than one occasion. Still, there was little to add to his dossier. This is truly amazing as numerous reports were made to the media, the NBI, Philippine government agencies, the United States Embassy, over six years ago about all of Meiring and his partners activities.
Meiring is known to have spent millions of dollars while in the Philippines. Where he got his funds was not known. Medical research grants from South Africa could be one source. Miering stated that that the South African government gives him some support, says Meiring’s private secretary, Sylvia Durante.
Meiring, according to a source who knew him up close had visitors from various sectors, rich and poor, congressmen, councilors, a governor, military and once, the source said, Meiring complained he was duped by a police general.
According to close friend, American David Hawthorn, Meiring told him he had found a fabulous treasure in US Federal notes and gold bonds. The way Hawthorn told it, Meiring in 1992 was able to sell a box full of US Federal Reserve notes worth more than $500 million. That box was one of 12 said to be part of a war chest for American and Filipino guerrillas fighting Japan forces during World War II. After the war, the boxes disappeared and stories have circulated ever since that they are in the possession of the MNLF/MILF and the Abu Sayyaf. There are also a number of reports of "fake" bonds and notes that have been sold by the Muslim extremist groups to finance their arms purchases. Several arrests have been made in Mindanao in relation to this.
There has long been unsubstantiated speculation in the Philippines that Mr. Meiring was responsible for bombings in the turbulent region as part of a covert American operation aimed at gathering intelligence on the rebels or prompting the Philippine government to approve greater United States military assistance.
But a former C.I.A. official who served in the Philippines discounted the possibility that Mr. Meiring was a C.I.A. operative. While the former official was not familiar with details of the Meiring case, he said keeping explosives in his hotel room and joking about “Christ in Action” would be obvious violations of agency protocol.
Another area of particular interest was the company Meiring supposedly worked for. It turned out that Meiring used in his communications his company name, Parousia International Trading Co. Inc. using the Evergreen hotel phone and fax numbers.
A check with the Mindanao Business Council showed there is no Parousia or Meiring in its directory. The firm, however, is listed under “metals” in www.negosyopark.com, a Davao City-based business portal site.
Mines and Geo-sciences regional chief Ma Luisa Jacinto said Parousia had no permit and no accreditation as mineral trader. Jacinto said that if Meiring had secured a permit and accreditation in the national office, they would have been sent copies.
There were also stories that meiring was in part looking for the much talked about but never found Yamashita treasure allegedly hidden and recovered by highland tribes in parts of Mindanao.
Treasure hunters claim much of Yamashita’s treasure was money, jewels, and gold belonging to the Nazis and the Japanese Army. Their descendants, inspired by some of the surviving and aged minion of Adolph Hitler, are in search of that treasure, believing that they can recover it; they can revive the movement and fulfill their dreams of a world run by a superior Aryan race.
Those same people harbor a deep-seeded resentment against Nelson Mandela and those who dismantled the racist apartheid system of South Africa. Meiring, being a supporter of Mandela is considered a traitor to the white race.
Another right-wing associate of Meiring is an American named Chuck Ager, from somewhere in Colorado, USA. Ager is a mining engineer. He was tasked by Meiring to supervise more than 30 tunneling operations in search of the remaining 12 boxes and the Yamashita treasure . In all, Ager was in charge of more than P5-million ($100,000 USD) worth of mining and digging equipment purchase over the years by Meiring from Jun Herrera at Davao General Hardware Company, which is only a half block from the Evergreen Hotel. Meiring and his American and Filipino associates have been known throughout the area as using explosives in their excavations of treasure sites and shipwrecks for many years. Meiring has provided explosives to other treasure hunters for their salvage attempts in Mindanao and North Luzon on Japanese shipwrecks and an American Warship.
A number of "current" shady people seem to center around Meiring and his activities. These include Commander Tony Nasa, Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), of Cotabato, and Harold Karaka, an American partner of Karl Rylls. Karaka, who is involved is selling the currency notes in Las Vegas and Europe, has made a number of trips to Mindanao in an attempt to kill another American treasure hunter, that was a rival of Meiring's. Meiring may also have been heavily involved with yet another American that is under investigation by Singapore and Philippine authorities, who is looking for investors and working a number of sites in Mindanao. The Philippine National Bureau of Investigation is also searching hard for W.F.Grobi, from Tennessee, and Keith P. Lablanc (Americans), reported the acting director of the NBI, Fermin Nasol. The are wanted in connection to the recovery of 2.5 trillion US dollars in fake and counterfeit bonds on July 10, 2002, and may be involved with Meirings group.
Legacy
The explosion is attributed to President Rodrigo Duterte's hostility towards the United States. In May 2016, Duterte's spokesman Peter Laviña cites the incident that involve Meiring as the reason for Duterte's negative sentiment towards the United States.
Meiring was brought out of the country supposedly by US Embassy officials despite facing charges of possessing explosives which Duterte took offense against. He called the alleged act a disrespect against the sovereignty of the Philippines. Duterte says that he has received no apology from the United States for the incident.
Duterte was still Mayor of Davao City at the time of the incident. At that time, Duterte said that he holds Meiring responsible for the incident saying that he refused to cooperate with the police when they made a search in his room before the explosion.
Mr. Duterte expressed outrage that the United States would help a criminal suspect leave the country without regard to Philippine law. He also fanned speculation that Mr. Meiring was involved in covert operations conducted by the United States in the Philippines.
The Philippines has long been the United States’ closest ally in Southeast Asia. The two nations have a mutual defense pact, and the Philippines recently agreed to allow the Pentagon to station troops and weapons at bases in the country. For more than a decade, American forces have also trained and advised Philippine soldiers hunting the Abu Sayyaf, a gang of rebel kidnappers operating in the southern islands that recently swore allegiance to the Islamic State.
Davao City is the most populous city in the south, and a pair of bombings there killed 38 people in 2003. But Mr. Duterte, its mayor for the past 20 years, has long expressed skepticism about the American military presence. In 2013, he said he had blocked an American proposal to base drones at Davao City’s old airport, citing his concerns about the Meiring case.
The explosion inside the hotel room happened in May 2002, and in March 2003 a bomb ripped thru the waiting shed of the old Davao International Airport which was followed a month later by another explosion in the Sasa wharf that resulted to the death of several people and the wounding of hundreds more.
A plausible narrative emerges of the CIA and its buddies in the Philippine military collaborating on a series of false flag atrocities to justify a war against the MILF and build the case for more US military involvement in Mindanao. By this reading, Meiring was in Davao when his bomb went bang. And then the bombs kept coming……until the U.S. reversed itself and entered into negotiations with the MILF in 2003 and began sponsoring a peace process between Manila and southern insurgents.
The US continued to insert CIA and FBI agents into Mindanao and onto Duterte’s turf without notifying him, as well as slotting as many of 6,000 troops into the region as part of a JSOC anti-terrorist operation mainly to target Abu Sayyaf, itself the tainted fruit of US recruitment of Philippine Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and, until the policy reversal on the MILF, the Philippine military’s preferred covert asset in the struggle with Mindanao separatists.
Unsurprisingly, Duterte is not a fan of the U.S. presence. He opposes the Balikatan, the joint US-Philippine military exercises, as disruptive to the peace process and communal harmony between Moro Muslims and Christians. In 2013, Duterte revealed he and his daughter (who served as mayor of Davao for a while) refused to allow the U.S. to operate drones out of the old airport at Davao (where the 2003 bombing had taken place).
What Meiring’s actual purpose was in Mindanao for about six to eight months
a year during this time period, no one can say for sure even today.
So who really was Michael T. Meiring? Why did US Embassy officials accord him special treatment if he was just an ordinary treasure hunter? What was he doing in Southern Mindanao for the past 10 years? Why was he in possession of explosives? Was he alone in his activities in Davao or was he with other conspirators? These, and many other questions will surely be raised until such time that Meiring's case will no longer ring a suspicious tone.
Sources:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/221188
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/world/asia/philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte.html
https://www.mindanews.com/top-stories/2016/10/from-the-archives-the-meiring-mystery-2003-series/
https://www.prweb.com/releases/2002/08/prweb43861.htm
https://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/why-president-duterte-rejects-a-strategy-of-tension-promoted-by-u-s
https://gulfnews.com/uae/police-clueless-about-us-treasure-hunter-1.388070
https://asiatimes.com/2016/05/meiring-murder-subversion-and-treason-dutertes-beef-with-us/
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