3 BOC employees in Cebu dismissed

Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez ordered yesterday the dismissal from the government service of two officials and a guard of the Bureau of Customs at the Port of Cebu for their alleged involvement in the questionable release of a rice shipment.

In a 12-page decision, Gutierrez also ordered the filing of graft charges against acting chief wharfinger Angel Go, acting wharfinger Habib Diator, and guard Conrado Rivera. 

The case against the three Customs employees stemmed from an anonymous complaint filed before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas on the alleged connivance of certain BOC officials with private individuals for the release of 15 container vans of undeclared rice from the Cebu port without the payment of Customs duties and taxes.

“The method of release was through the use of fake or falsified import entry documents that purportedly showed the payment of Customs duties and taxes but was revealed later to be untrue,” the complaint stated.

Records of the Office of the Ombudsman showed that the respondents allegedly used five falsified import entry documents to make it appear that a total of P1,172,384 in Customs duties had been paid for the release of the rice shipment.

According to the Ombudsman, the documents used were spurious based on the affidavit of Percito Lozada, then the acting chief of the assessment division of the Port of Cebu.

Lozada said the documents did not bear the machine imprints of the bank, indicating that duties and taxes were indeed paid.

The Ombudsman-Visayas identified Go as the one who allegedly submitted the fake documents to Oriental Port and Allied Services Corp. (OPASCOR), the cargo handler of the Cebu Port Authority (CPA), for the processing of the rice shipment’s release.

It added that Diator’s signature or initials appeared on the withdrawal receipts of OPASCOR, signifying clearance from the Customs wharfinger.

The respondents, however, denied the allegations in their counter-affidavits, claiming that their duties were ministerial in nature and did not involve determining if the documents in question were authentic.

In its decision, the Ombudsman, however, said that based on the evidence submitted, Go, Diator and Rivera clearly took part in the illegal release of the rice shipment “despite knowledge that the import entry documents were fake and that no amount of duties and taxes had been paid.”

This act, according the Ombudsman, “is a deviation from the established norms of conduct required of a public servant” and a “wrongful act which constitutes grave misconduct.”