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By Tess Bacalla
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
Second of three parts
AT the Bureau of Internal Revenue, some
officials and even lower-ranking personnel have been trying to
appear younger than they really are. Between 1989 and the first
quarter of 2001, 24 BIR employees filed a petition with the Civil
Service Commission for a change of their birth records.
This has nothing to do with vanity. Rather,
bureau officials seem reluctant to let go of their posts at the
mandatory retirement age of 65. The requests for the change in their
birth records, if approved, would mean that the petitioners’ stay
at the BIR would be extended by one to five years.
Unfortunately, indications are that such
reluctance has less to do with the desire to serve the public than
with the addiction to lifestyles that can be afforded only by those
who rake in millions of pesos a year.
Like most government officials and personnel,
the top monthly salaries at the BIR do not go beyond five figures.
Thus, if tax bureaucrats rely on just salary alone, they are
unlikely to amass very much. Says retired BIR assistant commissioner
Rizalina Magalona, who is well known in the bureau for her honesty:
“Even P1 million [net worth] for us [in government] is big.”
Yet several BIR officials are declaring net
worths in the millions, while some personnel are now under official
investigation for their alleged unexplained wealth. In most cases,
these are personnel who deal directly with the taxpayers.
Take Beverly S. Milo, chief of the assessment
division in Revenue District 8, Baguio City, who had a declared net
worth of only P45,100 in 1990, when she joined the BIR as a revenue
accountant. By 2001 this had grown to P2.6 million, which, according
to her detractors, may be an understatement.
At the very least, a preliminary investigation
conducted by the BIR national office showed Milo as having “a
massive increase in net worth for the years 1997 and 1998, and a
decrease in 2001.” It noted further that she was appointed OIC of
the assessment division on 1996.
The investigation was prompted by an anonymous
complaint on Milo’s allegedly having amassed numerous properties
since she became a bureau employee. But Milo has denied all
allegations against her, saying they are “malicious imputations
which are intended to destroy not only me but also my family,
friends and relatives.”
Percival T. Salazar, assistant commissioner for
enforcement service, had a declared net worth of P2.3 million in
2000 and P2.5 million in 2001. His asset statements for both years
listed four properties–two in Novaliches, one in San Fernando,
Pampanga, and another in Babac, Davao.
Salazar wrote the PCIJ that these are “well
within my financial capacity income.” He added that his wife has
had her own source of livelihood since their marriage in 1958, “in
the forms of rentals and agricultural income.” Both of Salazar’s
2000 and 2001 financial statements, however, listed only one
business in his SAL–Printing Phoenix Phils., where his wife
is a stockholder.
In his 2000-01 SALs, Salazar also described his
Novaliches properties as residential. A visit to his address in San
Bartolome, Novaliches, however, revealed a three-story commercial
building (although the third floor appeared to be the family’s
residence) that had a “For Rent” sign on it.
Salazar was also reported to have another
property in Tungko, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, consisting of a
house and a mango orchard. But he denied this, saying that a
“check with the Assessor’s Office in Bulacan” would prove him
right.
There was no record of Salazar owning property
there. But a friend of the Salazars insisted that the family does
own property in Tungko. A Tungko resident also said she was privy to
the Salazars’ acquisition of the property, detailing how Salazar
and his wife, Remedios, bought two hectares of land in 1994 for P80
a square meter. Some time later, she said, the Salazars bought
another parcel of land, measuring 2.5 hectares, for P100 a square
meter in the same area. Total: P4.1 million.
Salazar, the president of the BIR Employees’
Association, or BIREA, explained that he has four children working
in China and one in the United States. “They all remit part of
their earnings for family projects,” he wrote in a letter to the
PCIJ.
Magalona says a relatively higher net worth can
still be grossly underdeclared, especially for someone known for
having expensive hobbies. She cites the case of a former revenue
district officer in Makati who signed up for membership with the
Subic Yacht Club. At the time, she recounts, the membership fee was
about P1 million.
Arnel A. Bernardo, formerly chief of the tax
fraud division at the BIR and now technical assistant to the
regional director of Zamboanga, is a multimillionaire. He has the
biggest declared net worth–P12.4 million in 1999, which leaped to
P21 million in 2001–among those whose SALs were obtained and
examined by the PCIJ.
His cash on hand and bank deposits amounted to
P3.6 million in 1999 and a whopping P10.4 million in 2001. His
personal properties jumped from P5.3 million in 1999 to P12.1
million two years later. No businesses appear in his SALs for 1999
and 2001, even though he listed his wife’s occupation as “businesswoman.”
Bernardo, who receives an annual salary of
P269,000, has a three-story residential and commercial building in
Sampaloc, Manila. “My net worth is a matter of record, and
therefore something I never intended to hide,” he said in a letter
to the PCIJ. “If I am confident to declare it for the public to
know and verify, rest assured that the sources of whatever assets my
wife and I have [at present] are completely legal.”
Critics of the BIR say that given the amount of
wealth being amassed by those working there, it is no wonder that
many do not want to retire, at least not at the mandatory age.
David Alarcon, revenue district officer of
Paco-Sta. Ana-Pandacan-San Andres, said, though, that all he was
doing was rectifying a typographical error on an information slip
when he petitioned the Civil Service Commission to correct his birth
record, and change the date from December 1, 1934, to December 1,
1939.
The information slip that contained what Alarcon
said was the wrong date became the basis for his being included on
the retirement list of BIR personnel for 1999. But because the
commission granted his petition, he will retire next year yet.
Alarcon said that “all my scholastic
records” from Grade One to college and other records “clearly
indicate that my date of birth is December 1, 1939.”
But in a 2001 memorandum to then-BIR
Commissioner Rene Bañez, Inspection Service Assistant Commissioner
Linda Simple pointed out that for years Alarcon himself had been
writing different birth dates in official documents.
Observed Simple: “In an affidavit executed on
January 4, 1960, Alarcon stated that his date of birth was December
1, 1935. In his Sworn Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net
Worth for 1961, he said he was born on December 1, 1937. In his
Personal Data Sheet (PDS) dated January 3, 1973, his date of birth
was December 1, 1935, while [in] his PDS for 1996 . . . he stated
that he was born on December 1, 1939.”
The PCIJ also obtained a copy of a certification
from the Land Transportation Office, dated January 30, 2003, that
indicated Alarcon’s birth date as December 1, 1935.
Another interesting case is that of Juanito
Valdecantos, chief revenue officer III with the BIR’s Taxpayers
Assistance Service. In a transcript of the judicial hearing on the
reconstitution of his birth record, Valdecantos was quoted as saying
that his court petition to have his date of birth changed from June
26, 1935, to June 26, 1938, had been prompted by the Department of
Foreign Affairs requiring him to submit a birth certificate every
time he traveled abroad. He said he tried to get a certificate of
live birth from his hometown, only to find out that records had been
burned during the war.
Valdecantos said that two of his neighbors told
him that his real birth year was 1938 and not 1935, which they swore
to in an affidavit. One of those neighbors turned out to be Gervacio
Perez, father of Lema P. Valdecantos, the widow of Juanito
Valdecantos’s brother.
Lema is now reportedly Valdecantos’s live-in
partner. (A 1999 passport application for a child surnamed
Valdecantos listed the parents as Juanito and Lema Valdecantos.)
Yet when Juanito Valdecantos applied for a
renewal of his passport in July last year, he wrote down June 26,
1935, as his birthday. The same is true of a certification issued to
him by the Land Transportation Commission on February 7, 2003, which
carries his original date of birth.
Going by his 1935 birth date, Valdecantos should
have retired three years ago. Instead, he will retire next month,
thanks to his rectified record of birth.
The case of Aguinaldo L. Miravalles, acting
regional director of Tuguegarao, Cagayan, is even more curious.
Miravalles, who had a declared net worth of P4.38 million in 1999,
was the regional district officer formerly of Caloocan City. In 1992
the Civil Service Commission granted his petition to have his birth
record changed from December 16, 1934, to December 16, 1938.
In his petition Miravalles had said that he
could get neither a birth certificate from the civil registrar in
his hometown nor a baptism certificate. He then decided to get an
affidavit from his godparents, “who willingly certified that as
far as they could remember, I was really born on December 16,
1938.”
The PCIJ has a record from the National Archives
certifying that Miravalles was born on December 15, 1932, which
would make him 70 this year, way beyond the mandatory retirement age
of 65. If he were born in 1935, he would be 68. But because
the commission granted his 1992 petition, the BIR considers
Miravalles eligible for retirement only by December 16 this year.
On top of this, Miravalles does not even have
civil service eligibility and is therefore not qualified to take his
post. The commission has issued a certification saying so, even if
his Personal Data Sheet at the BIR says he is eligible for the civil
service. (Miravelles declined to answer PCIJ’s questions.)
In her memorandum to Bañez, Simple quoted
Raquel Buensanita of the commission’s Legal Affairs Office as
saying that the granting of requests for change of birth records at
the commission is “pro forma, and does not usually take much time.
She said that if the request is accompanied by the requisite
documents . . . the Legal Affairs Office will immediately draft a
resolution for the approval and signature by the chairman and two
commissioners or at least by any two commissioners.”
Simple then proposed specific measures to
“prevent unwarranted requests of revenue officers and employees”
for correction of records of birth.
One measure would require the parties concerned
to notify the BIR before filing their petition in court “so that
it can coordinate with the Office of the Solicitor General or
Fiscal’s Office for any possible opposition.”
Another would direct them to give the BIR their
request for correction “so it can submit its comment/opposition if
the request appears unwarranted as shown by documents on file with
the Bureau.”
To date, not one of Simple’s suggested
measures have been adopted. Says a high-ranking BIR official:
“Everything is status quo.”
Part 1
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