Senator Panfilo Lacson revealed in his privilege speech the prevailing corruption in the Bureau of Customs (BOC).
Lacson enumerated the illegal shipments that have entered the ports of Manila.
Among them is the shipment of garbage from Canada, and the five-ton garbage that South Korea exported to the Philippines in 2018.
The Senator said this is not the first time that other countries have dumped their garbage to the Philippines, making the country the official dumpsite of Southeast Asia.
Lacson also cited the series of illegal drugs shipments in the country despite the successive changes of leadership in the BOC.
These include the 6.4 billion pesos worth of Shabu that was discovered in Valenzuela City in May 2017; the 4-billion pesos worth of shabu discovered in an abandoned Vecaba shipment at the Manila International Container Port in August 2018; and another shipment of shabu worth one billion pesos in Malabon City last week.
It was at this point that Senator Lacson questioned the Customs officials and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency as to why they resort to auctioning the illegal shipments as a means to lead the possible members of the syndicates to come out of hiding.
Lacson said in his speech, “The Bureau averred that it deliberately placed the shipment containing illegal drugs for auction, which was later bid out and won by Goldwin Commercial. Let’s assume for a while that we are buying their story, the question is: is the BOC legally allowed to subject prohibited goods to public sale or auction?”
The Senator claimed that the Tara system in the agency still exists and that Customs officials are still getting paid for every shipment that gets into the country.
“For the Office of the Commissioner, an average of P5,000 per container plus 10% of the collections of each section/office directly under OCOM; P3,000 for Intelligence Group; P1,000 to P2,000 for the Enforcement Group; P3,000 for the Risk Management Office; and P2,000 to P3,000 for the Import and Assessment Service,” Lacson said.
He added, “The tara goes to various persons, for his office or the Office of the Commissioner, I will leave it to Gen. Guerrero to investigate and find out.”
He further said, “The MICP and POM district offices receive P3,000 per container. Each container with alert order may be charged as high as P50,000. Holy cow!”
Lacson, however, clarified that BOC Chief Rey Leonardo is not involved in the corruption in the agency he is leading, but the Senator pointed out that various factions in the BOC still continue to receive “tara.”
The Senator said that this should be a challenge to the new BOC chief to cleanse the agency from corruption. (with reports from Nel Maribojoc) /mbmf
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