Smugglers of garlic, onions still around

It was odd how then-agriculture secretary Proceso Alcala in 2014 described Lilia (alias Leah) Cruz, alleged spice smuggler: “She is the good cartel.” Retail prices of garlic were soaring then at P320-P400 a kilo, from only P80. Consumers were groaning. How can a cartelist be saintly, when the Constitution and law forbid such modus operandi? Alcala didn’t explain.

The reason might now be emerging. The Ombudsman has charged Alcala, Cruz, and 22 others with graft in connection with the garlic cartel they started in 2013. Cruz was then chairwoman of the Vegetable Importers, Exporters, and Vendors Association, consisting of wholesalers and shippers of garlic, onion, and ginger. Alcala in July 2013 made Cruz chairwoman too of a National Garlic Action Team (NGAT), consisting of Cruz’s cronies masquerading as farmer leaders. NGAT’s purpose was to advise the agriculture department’s Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) on the sufficiency of supply and fairness of price of garlic. Through NGAT Alcala let Cruz take control of the garlic trade, investigators aver.

At first NGAT in August 2013 declared there was enough garlic in traders’ warehouses to last till harvest time in March 2014. Three months later, however, it “alerted” the BPI about the acute need to import. BPI’s head then was Alcala’s appointee Clarito Barron. The latter hastily issued import permits for 58,240 tons of the commodity. The recipients were eight fake farmer cooperatives. Four were fronts of Cruz; the rest, of her pals, investigators later would find out. With their imports the country’s few cold storages were filled to the brim. When harvest came that March farmers had no warehouse space left for their produce. Rather than be stuck with rotten stocks they were forced to sell very low – to none other than Cruz and confederates.

The cartel virtually cornered both the imports and domestic supply. In no time it jacked up garlic retail prices to P320-P400 a kilo, or 400500 percent the usual. It went on till Christmas 2014. Consumers had no choice but to buy; one can’t sauté without garlic. Farmers and consumers were had. Cruz reportedly made a cool P120 million.

July 2017. “There sure is a garlic cartel,” present agriculture secretary Manny Piñol declared to the Senate. His proof: 43 farmer cooperatives and traders had been licensed to import 70,000 tons of the commodity in the first half of 2017 alone, to stabilize supply and prices. But they brought in only 19,000 tons. So prices were beginning to soar again at around P240 a kilo, from the P120 to which it had settled after the profiteering of three years back.

Senate committee on agriculture chairwoman Cynthia Villar took a look at Piñol’s roster of 43 importers. To her surprise they were the very same cartelists she had investigated in June 2014. The Office of Fair Competition under the Dept. of Justice had exposed the same characters then. The NBI in fact had recommended in 2015 the indictment of 125 price manipulators and crooked bureaucrats. That’s why BPI director Barron was sacked then. Malacañang had spared Alcala, treasurer of the then-ruling Liberal Party. But five critical food and agriculture agencies were removed from his authority.

Oddly in the next hearing, Piñol’s new man at the BPI, Vivencio Mamaril, contradicted his findings about the garlic cartel’s modified scam. There is no cartel, Mamaril claimed; all the 43 importers he had licensed purportedly were genuine. He supposedly knew whereof he spoke: he had been with the BPI since 2012 under Barron, and there never was a garlic cartel even then. He had not even heard of Lilia (alias Leah) Cruz, a frequent visitor at the BPI due to NGAT, and later a headline-maker during the garlic crisis of 2014.

Piñol at first defended Mamaril as just confused and jittery in front of inquiring senators and glaring TV cameras. Later he quietly removed him. Documents told the true story of garlic price gouging by a cartel. It turned out that Alcala, Barron, and Cruz have long been in cahoots. In 2005 Barron had interceded with Customs to exempt Cruz et al from P14 million in duties for onion imports. The unusual request had come from the House of Representatives committee on agriculture, chaired by Congressman Alcala.

Last month Customs intercepted at the Manila port 17 refrigerated cargo containers of onions, misdeclared as duty-free apples from China. That prompted a red alert, for the onion-garlic-ginger cartel obviously is at it again. There’s a twist. Murmurs are that new cartelists, abetted by agriculture department higher-ups, are trying to edge out the old ones. As they say, “Kami naman (It’s our turn).”

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