All ‘hot’ cars still in Palace, BOC man says

All 32 "hot" luxury cars being readied for auction by the Bureau of Customs remain intact at Malacañang.

A source close to Customs Commissioner Renato Ampil told The STAR yesterday not a single unit of the remaining luxury cars out of the 52 seized from the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority freeport zone in Zambales in 1998 are missing from the motorpool of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) in Malacañang.

"As far as the units from Subic are concerned, these are all intact, not one missing," the official said.

The source said he made the clarification following unverified reports that some of the cars "parked for safekeeping" at the PSG motorpool have disappeared.

Last month, Ampil had reportedly sought the luxury cars’ return to the Bureau of Customs after an "unidentified claimant" had complained that they were "nowhere to be found."

The source said of the original 52 cars, 20 have been auctioned off; 12 are subject to court litigation — eight are under review by the Court of Tax Appeals and four are in the custody of the Parañaque Regional Trial Court; and about five or six are not in running condition.

Former Customs Commissioner Nelson Tan told The STAR yesterday the bureau had actually seized 52 "hot" luxury cars and not 60 or 103 as reported by the media.

"Where did they get those figures?" he asked.

The source said the true figures are contained in a report about the smuggled cars, which Sen. Anna Dominique Coseteng had made public recently.

But the source does not know the whereabouts of the 100 cars that had been seized by a Malacañang Task Force headed by Assistant Secretary Agapito Pongos.

These cars were seized by the task force before the issue of the assignment to Cabinet secretaries of the 52 "hot" cars had come out in the newspapers, the source added.

In August 1998, the Customs collector at Subic ordered the 52 luxury cars seized "for the use of spurious documents and non-payment of the ad valorem tax."

The source said the consignees refused to settle and held on to an Authority to Release Imported Goods (ATRIG) issued by one "Revenue District Officer Lorenzo."

The controversial ATRIGs have already been recalled by former Internal Revenue Commissioner Beethoven Rualo, the source added.