2 BIR officers nabbed for demanding P160 M
Two Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR)-Revenue District Office employees in Pasig City were arrested by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for extorting P160 million from a telecom company to settle its tax deficiencies.
Chief assessment officer Alfredo Pagdilao Jr. and revenue officer Agripina Vallestero were arrested in a joint entrapment operation conducted by the NBI and the Presidential AntiCorruption Commission (PACC) at the Seda Hotel in Quezon City last Saturday.
Authorities arrested Pagdilao after he received the marked money at the basement parking lot.
NBI-National Capital Region Director Cesar Bacani said the two suspects and their cohorts Rufo Ranario and Michelle dela Torre demanded P160 million for the settlement of a P1.6-billion tax deficiency.
The company, which was not named, haggled with the suspects to lower the
amount to P75 million for authorities to net them in an entrapment, according to NBI spokesman Ferdinand Lavin.
The NBI bought more time in arresting the two after Pagdilao rescheduled the meeting the following day because the company was only able to encash P10 million.
PACC chairman Dante Jimenez warned public officials that authorities will go after them pursuant to President Duterte’s message in his State of the Nation Address to crack down on corruption in government.
Duterte mentioned the BIR as one of the most corrupt government agencies.
“It’s so blatant for these officials to victimize innocent people. This is giving meaning to what the President said in his SONA,” Jimenez said.
The suspects will face charges for plunder and graft.
Corruption never stops
Ombudsman Samuel Martires, head of the agency mandated to investigate and prosecute corrupt public officials, yesterday admitted that deeply rooted corruption in the government can never be stopped even by the Duterte administration.
“During the State of the Nation Address last Monday, he (President Duterte) asked a question –‘When will corruption stop?’ I was seated directly in front of the President, on top of the gallery, and I said never, never shall we stop corruption, never can we stop corruption, not in the next 100 to 1000 years, it will never stop,” Martires said during a multisectoral dialogue with representatives of various government agencies and private stakeholders in Quezon City yesterday.
“The more technology becomes sophisticated, the more corruption will become sophisticated, corruption will never end so what am I here for?” he added.
Martires said red tape, bureacracy and corrupt practices are so rampant even in simple government transactions, thus there is a need to focus on values formation of the younger generation to prevent them from being eaten up by the system. “I am in the Office of the Ombudsman just to serve for a very short term of seven years, but in that seven-year term, I will assure everyone that I will shift from prosecution and investigation to values formation and religious education as the main entry points in preventing corruption,” Martires said.
Martires said his office is planning to enter into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Department of Education (DepEd) in order to integrate into the curriculum of private and public schools more thorough good manners and right conduct (GMRC) and values formation subjects.
Martires believes that the youth and the next generation of Filipinos should be molded into honest, righteous and Godfearing citizens in schools.
“We all know that corruption has become a global problem. The Philippines is ranked number 36 among the corrupt countries in the world,” he told guests and participants of a multi-sectoral meeting at the Office of the Ombudsman on Thursday.
“I will be needing (your) assistance, I am serious in this program,” Martires told representatives from the education sector present during the event.
Martires said he is also studying the possibility of proposing to Congress to extend the coverage of Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act to the private sector.
Under the current law, a private individual can only be charged with violation of RA 3019 if he or she is named as coaccused of a public official.
On Tuesday, Martires ordered an indepth probe on the alleged massive corruption in the Bureau of Customs (BOC) following a directive from Duterte to cleanse the graft-ridden agency.