Steel firm protests 'smuggler' tag

MANILA, Philippines - An international company engaged in the business of supplying stainless steel which filed a P179-million graft charge before the Office of the Ombudsman against three ranking Bureau of Customs (BOC) officials last year said yesterday that it has never engaged in illegal activities.

“Our client, Sanyo Seiki Stainless Steel Corp. (SSSSC), is not, and has never, engaged in smuggling,” Luis Angel Aseoche, the company’s lawyer, said in a letter sent to The STAR in reaction to a report which mentioned the firm in an article about how connivance between smugglers and customs personnel continues.

He stressed that SSSSC filed its complaint against former Run After the Smugglers (RATS) leader, Deputy Commissioner Gregorio Chavez, before the Office of the President “because the firm found itself the object of a relentless, single-minded campaign soon after its general manager filed a graft case against Chavez and his men at the Office of the Ombudsman.”

“Sanyo Seiki could not transact any business at that time because Chavez’s men posted themselves 24/7 outside its warehouse and threatened to accost, as they did apprehend later on, any delivery truck of Sanyo Seki that would attempt to make deliveries to its local clients,” he explained.

“Even after showing proof that the goods transported by the truck were locally sourced and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the BOC, Chavez’s men proceeded to seize the truck and the goods contained therein. This is pure and simple harassment,” Asoeche said.

He stressed that the BOC’s accomplishments should not be based on the number of “cases” filed, but the quality of the complaints.

“Chavez may have filed “44 cases” but if these cases were simply filed to meet their self-imposed quota of filing one ‘big’ case a week regardless of the quality of evidence in possession, then this is nothing but one elaborate ‘shame campaign’ that concerns itself more about earning “pogi points” in the media, rather than a successful prosecution,” Aseoche said.

“It would be interesting to find out if the BOC will win all these 44 cases, after it had already recklessly labeled the respondents as ‘smugglers.’Perhaps, Chavez and his men may have to prepare for a string of damage suits that will surely be filed against them, should they fail to prove the cases which they have initiated,” he added.

Aseoche noted that if BOC Commissioner Ruffy Biazon and his present staff have not been as audacious in filing cases left and right, “it only means that they are more circumspect than the wild posse of Chavez. Prudence should not be mistaken for spinelessness or, worse, ‘connivance’,” he said.