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Lapeña sacks Customs officials for supposed collusion with smugglers
Customs Commissioner Isidro Lapeña relieved on Thursday several officials of the Bureau of Customs at the Manila International Container Port (MICP) for supposedly colluding with smugglers.
Lapeña ordered the administrative relief of the MICP Customs examiner, Customs appraiser, and several other employees at the container port. The bureau has so far withheld their names.
“I will make them answer for this violation of law,” Lapeña told reporters during a shipment inspection at MICP.
He said that the BOC personnel recommended the lifting of an alert order on goods that were found to be smuggled.
“I ordered the alert order on these container vans, however, the customs personnel in charge of the examination submitted a report different from what was found during our re-examination today,” Lapeña said.
“They also submitted a recommendation of lifting the order, justifying that everything is in order despite the irregularity,” he said.
The sugar shipment arrived at the MICP from Thailand on July 13, and was said to have been consigned to Don Trading owned by a certain Dennis Orland Narra of Intramuros, Manila.
“I believe this importer is part of a cartel that holds the smuggled sugar and will only release the commodity once the market prices are high,” Lapeña noted.
“One of the reasons why the prices of the basic commodities are high is because the prices are manipulated,” he said.
According to the BOC chief, the bureau will continue to impose stricter measures in examining shipments entering the country to eliminate the possibility of misdeclaration.
“We have to keep everything checked and if needed, counterchecked, just to prevent the entry of smuggled goods in the country,” he said.
“If we did not conduct a re-examination, the smuggled sugar could have entered the market taking advantage of the high prices of commodities,” the BOC chief said. —VDS, GMA News
