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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
This one’s definitely for Ripley’s Believe
It or Not.
Hand tools imported from South Korea arrived at
the Port of Manila on board reefer vans. Any ordinary person would
have been suspicious of why hand tools had to be refrigerated, but
people at the Bureau of Customs are no ordinary persons. Documents
on the shipment of “hand tools” were processed and approved by
21 offices of the bureau without any questions.
The reason why the “hand tools” were
refrigerated came out only after the Presidential Anti-Smuggling
Group headed by Assistant Secretary Antonio Villar intercepted a
reefer van—the “hand tools” were actually onions, a regulated
product. This and other alleged anomalies at the Customs bureau
surfaced at Monday’s hearing on smuggling conducted jointly by the
Senate Committee on Ways and Means headed by Sen. Francis Escudero
and the Senate Committee on Public Services headed by Sen. Juan
Ponce Enrile.
“It is difficult to see if one does not want
to see,” Escudero said as he rejected explanations by Customs
Commissioner Napoleon Morales and other Customs officials on why
they released the shipment of “hand tools” even if the goods are
refrigerated.
Jesus Arranza, chairman of the Federation of
Philippine Industries, said the master bill of lading prepared by
the carrier was not scrutinized by the Bureau of Customs or else it
would have found out that the contents were not hand tools.
“Moreover, the X-ray machine was not used to
detect the smuggling,” he added.
Morales said they have already filed two cases
of smuggling against Texmart Trading, the importer of the
misdeclared goods. Enrile, however, is unimpressed.
“You filed the case only because [the
anti-smuggling group] discovered it. The fact is, there was a
failure in the [Customs] organization. You had computers,
intelligence units, X-rays, and you never wondered why hand tools
were refrigerated,” the senator said.
Villar said his men had also uncovered the
smuggling of Peking ducks worth P200 million.
“Peking duck is banned because of bird flu
from China, but it is allowed to come in,” he noted.
The smuggled Peking ducks are stored in a cold
storage plant and anti-smuggling agents are guarding them to keep
them from being spirited out.
The Customs bureau is “still making an
inventory after three or four months and my men can’t leave. I
don’t know why it is taking them that long when all they have to
do is destroy the contraband,” Villar said.
As if these two cases are not enough, he added
that 1,724 container vans confiscated by the government have not yet
been bidded out by the Bureau of Customs.
“I had asked that the 1,724 container vans
undergo bidding so the government could generate added revenues but
there has been no action yet,” Villar said.
He urged the Senate committees to inspect the
container vans, together with media, the anti-smuggling group and
the private sector, as he expressed suspicion that most of the vans
were already emptied of their contents.
Some 674 of the forfeited container vans are at
the Asian Terminal Inc. and 1,050, at the International Container
Terminal Services Inc.
Escudero said some P142 billion in revenue is
lost every year due to smuggling.
“This means that we really do not need new
taxes. All we have to do is collect the right taxes,” he added.
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