Trillanes backs ‘covert’ lifestyle checks for Customs employees

Mandatory lifestyle check for employees and a revival of private pre-shipment inspection are among the measures being pushed by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV to help rid the Bureau of Customs (BOC) of corruption.

Trillanes has joined other senators in expressing doubts on the effectiveness of President Duterte’s move to have the Armed Forces take over the BOC, where billions of pesos worth of illegal drugs have slipped through in the last two years.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson earlier said learning from past mistakes and best practices while putting in place an effective counter-intelligence system is a much better approach to cleaning up the bureau than deploying military personnel.

With the cleaning up of the bureau should come the prosecution of drug lords and customs officials responsible for smuggling tons of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu, including former BOC commissioners Isidro Lapeña and Nicanor Faeldon.

“The government should conduct covert lifestyle checks and prosecute or dismiss erring BOC personnel,” Trillanes said.

He said incentives for customs personnel who exceed performance targets should also be increased.

Operations of the BOC should be fully computerized, to include mandatory electronic filing with automatic electronic copies furnished to Commission on Audit (COA), the Office of the Ombudsman and counter-intelligence units, he said.

The government should revive the private pre-shipment inspection services while reducing customs duties – except for protected goods – to discourage smuggling, he said.

Trillanes also suggested the BOC utilize multiple remote x-ray monitors manned by COA and counter-intelligence units to avoid collusion among erring personnel and officials, and to provide countercheck to findings of the bureau’s x-ray operators.

The Senate Blue Ribbon committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon, is set to resume on Nov. 22 its inquiry into the smuggling of an estimated P11 billion worth of shabu last July.

One of the inquiry’s key witnesses – former BOC intelligence operative Jimmy Guban – was taken into the Department of Justice’s witness protection program on Wednesday.

Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza is also pushing for compulsory pre-shipment inspection of all “containerized imports” to thwart the smuggling of illegal drugs and goods through ports in Manila and other cities.

“The President is in a position to administratively direct the mandatory inspection at the country of origin of all containerized cargoes destined for the Philippines,” he said.

He said smuggling of illegal drugs could have been detected had shipments been examined at the port of origin.

“All of the estimated P21 billion worth of methamphetamine or shabu smuggled through the Manila port in three batches between May 2017 and July 2018 arrived in 20-foot shipping containers from China, Malaysia and Taiwan,” he said.

He added that pre-shipment inspection is the practice used by governments, mostly in developing countries, of requiring importers to engage accredited third-party surveyors to verify shipment details, such as price, quantity and quality of goods, before cargoes depart the exporting country.

Atienza pointed out that this inspection system is used to prevent the undervaluation of taxable imports and to compensate for the inadequacies in the importing country’s customs and other administrative structures.

Amid the controversy surrounding the missing shabu shipment estimated to be worth between P6.8 billion and P11 billion and blame-passing by the BOC and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, the President last week ordered the “military takeover” of the BOC.

Administration officials have since clarified that soldiers would merely be deployed to the country’s ports to help deter crooked Customs officials and employees.