Customs official denies DOF charges

MANILA, Philippines - A Bureau of Customs official has strongly denied the criminal and administrative charges filed against her by the Department of Finance’s anti-corruption unit Revenue Integrity Protection Service (RIPs).

In an interview, Marissa Rae Rollo Galang, officer-in-charge of Manila’s Customs Intelligence and Investigation Services (CIIS), described the allegations as a “well-packaged web of lies peddled by her detractors who want me out of my job.”

She said up to now, she has yet to receive a copy of the reported DOF-RIPs complaint.

Galang said the news item has cast aspersion on her person, accusing her of falsifying her daily time record in May 2007 “to make it appear that she was reporting for work even if she was actually in the Republic of Palau.”

She said she does not deny that she was in Palau from May 30 to June 2, 2007, but her travel was authorized by the Bureau of Customs as evidenced by the BOC’s HRMD notation appearing in her “leave card,” and that her authority to travel was approved by DOF Undersecretary Gil Beltran on May 28, 2007.

She also emphasized that the property, a townhouse alluded in the alleged complaint, was acquired by her in 1993. She said she entered the BOC in 2001 or eight years after she acquired the property alluded in the RIPs complaint.

“There is a malicious impression that the said property was acquired by me when I was already working at the BOC,” Galang said.

She said had she been asked to comment on the alleged charges, she could have provided the documents that would prove the falsity of the charges heaped against her.