Customs game: seize-then-free contraband

Appointing retired generals to civilian posts doesn’t work. Two who headed the prisons bureau had to be relieved for fund misdeeds. One at the civil aviation office was sacked for inability to get the country out of international blacklists. One at Immigrations was removed for letting fugitives flee for abroad. One at the national security agency failed to detect the impending Moro siege of Zamboanga City. One at Customs resigned out of frustration with corrupt and inept superiors.

Malacañang had better check on Customs deputy Jessie Dellosa, lest another ex-Armed Forces chief fouls up. This can put to shame the slew of army retirees he has placed in his Office for Intelligence.

Already, senators are asking why Dellosa had no “intel” about Davidson Bangayan alias David Tan’s 200,000-ton rice smuggling last Oct. It had to take newly posted Customs chief John Sevilla to order the seizure in Dec.

Records are being bared about Dellosa’s other lapses. Allegedly he bombarded Customs with hundreds of “intel” alerts, yet only a handful led to actual seizures of contraband. Worse, the few seizures were reversed, and the goods released, on flimsy legality.

That is, the contrabands were not assessed based primarily on “transaction values” by which those were exported to the Philippines. “Transaction value” is required under Section 201 of the Tariffs and Customs Code. But arbitrarily used instead were alternative methods, like “value of identical or similar goods.” Under the Code, such modes may be used only when the “transaction value” cannot be ascertained.

In such manner, signature leather bags were valued only as ordinary ones, or expensive food brands as low-class counterparts. On paper, the government was able to collect more duties by recording higher quantities. In reality it lost the maximum duties that could have been earned, had the goods been properly valued by transaction, then auctioned off. Examples from Dellosa’s office records:

• Alert Order No. A/IG/20131204-001; consignee: Lachica Enterprises; recommendation: lifting (of seizure order) upon payment of additional duties (P29,339, less fine); reason: adjustment based on “similar importation”;

• Alert Order No. A/IG/20131106-103; consignee: Chrismore Enterprises; recommendation: lifting upon payment of additional duties (P12,461, less surcharge); reason: adjustment of value based on similar importation;

• Alert Order No. A/IG/20131206-106; consignee: Kingsphere Enterprises; recommendation: lifting upon payment of additional duties (P24,469, less surcharge); reason: adjustment based on similar importation;

• Alert Order No. A/IG/20131121-102; consignee: Northwings Enterprise; recommendation: lifting upon payment of additional duties (P20,286, less surcharge); reason: adjustment based on similar importation;

• Alert Order No. A/IG/20140103-108; consignee: Voowher Five Trading Corp.; recommendation: lifting upon payment of additional duties (P16,366, less surcharge); reason: adjustment based on similar importation.

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Reader EJ Flores of Las Piñas City chimes in on the controversial centralization of gun licensing at the PNP Camp Crame GHQ (Gotcha, 17 Mar 2014):

“Section 43 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of R.A. 10591, the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act, provides:

“’Final General Amnesty within six (6) months from the promulgation of this IRR.’ Dir.-Gen. Alan Purisima, in a press release last Sept. 29, 2013, said, ‘The new law will be implemented 120 days after the signing by the President.’ The law was signed last May 29, 2013. Law abiding citizens have been waiting for this gun amnesty ten months after the law was signed.

“Meantime, reason for centralizing all gun registrations to Camp Crame does not jibe with the envisioned amnesty. Purisima says ‘Most of the regional offices are lax and careless, and could be prone to bribery.’ That’s why he does not trust them to submit to GHQ the right statistics. It would be interesting to know how much corruption there is at the central office.”

From G. Sacramento, Baguio City: “General Purisima distrusts the PNP regional commands, so centralizes gun licensing in Camp Crame GHQ. But didn’t he appoint those regional chiefs and staffs in the first place? His move is as fishy as his deleting fugitive Delfin Lee from the PNP’s most-wanted list, followed by his kicking upstairs of Lee’s arrester Colonel Conrad Capa.”

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