|
The government offers monetary rewards to informants who alert the
authorities to, among others, big-time tax evaders and similar
crooks. How about someone who has not only detected a long-running
racket that has cost the state billions of pesos in taxes and duties
diverted to private pockets over three decades or so?
Enrique “Tet” Garcia not only detailed how
the syndicated crime was committed, the former congressman and now
governor of Bataan also devised ways to put a stop to the
large-scale theft of taxpayers’ money.
One of Garcia’s proposed solutions to the
virtually invisible hemorrhage of taxes and duties payable to the
bureaus of internal revenue (BIR) and customs (BoC) has been adopted
by Philippine Clearing House Corporation (PCHC), which certifies the
authenticity of all checks passing through the country’s
banks—including their 5,000 or so branches.
In a memorandum dated May 9 to the country’s
clearing banks and institutions, PCHC President Eduardo J. Katigbak
Jr. said: “We are pleased to inform that we have already started
to print/spray the following tracer/identification band at the back
of checks payable to the BIR and the BOC . . . ”
Katigbak added: “The suggestion to indicate
the name of the government institution in the tracer band was
initiated by . . . Governor Garcia and adopted by PCHC to serve as
an additional control/tracing point for the banks in proving their
inward checks that are payable to the BIR or BOC.”
PCHC is a wholly-owned subsidiary and technical
arm of the Bankers Association of the Philippines, which launched
the first Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) clearing system
in Metro Manila in 1980 and paved the way for the automation of
check clearing throughout the country.
Through its May 9 memo, which took effect May
15, PCHC fulfilled Garcia’s dream of foiling a racket, which first
reared its ugly head 30 years ago.
Katigbak’s response to Garcia’s suggestion
was particularly gratifying to the governor who had since 2000 been
appealing to the Department of Finance, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas
and other officials for help to thwart the syndicate—to little or
no avail. This despite the fact that both the BIR and BOC are
regularly reported to fall short of their revenue-collection
targets.
The financial authorities’ foot-dragging to
his proposals had made Garcia suspect that the plunder of taxes and
duties probably involved certain highly-placed officials.
To be fair, the DOF did adopt Garcia’s
proposal for the “separate batching” of checks payable to the
BIR and BOC in 2003—nearly four years after Garcia first broached
it. Separately batched, the checks have since been isolated and
listed by PCHC as deposits to the accounts of the Bureau of
Treasury, allowing for improved verification.
But it was PCHC’s recent memo that, according
to Garcia, hammered the last nail in the racket’s coffin.
The syndicate discovered its opportunity some
time in 1978 when the BIR and BOC were prohibited from accepting
direct payment of taxes and duties, which instead were coursed
through so-called authorized agents banks (AABs). The policy was
designed to stop the theft of collections by low-level taxmen and
customs officials, but ironically opened up the plunder of much
larger amounts of revenue collections.
As explained by Garcia, the racket involved AAB
managers, accountants and cashiers who were enticed by BIR and/or
BOC insiders to open fictitious deposit accounts. The racketeers
deposited unfunded third-party checks with amounts corresponding to
checks from taxpayers payable to BIR or BOC.
The unfunded third-party check is then replaced
with the intercepted check payable to BIR or BOC, and presented for
clearing to the drawer bank through PCHC. Clearance, prior to the
May 9 memo, merely entailed verifying the authenticity of the check
signatories and sufficiency of funds to cover the amount.
Once the check payable to BIR or BOC cleared,
its proceeds were withdrawn and the fictitious account to which it
had been diverted was closed. The collections lost to the syndicate
were eye-popping indeed.
According to published accounts, some of the
losses were reported by the Quezon Avenue and Binangonan, Rizal,
branches of a well-known bank amounting to over P2 billion. Other
banks have, however, been less candid—for obvious reasons.
Isn’t Garcia, therefore, entailed to rewards
for, not only unearthing the multibillion-peso racket, but also for
proposing practical solutions to the problem?
dansoy26@yahoo.com
|
