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Saturday, August 13, 2005
Customs chief ‘trying to corner’ import bond deals
By Karlon N. Rama
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
Customs Collector Lourdes Mangaoang’s Aug. 10, 2005 complaint against an insurance executive has opened a can of worms.
In an interview yesterday, an irate Charles Almendras, Cebu branch manager of the Sterling Insurance Company Inc., accused the district collector of perpetrating corruption in the short time she has headed the Bureau of Customs (BOC) Cebu district office.
Almendras, related to the Duranos of Cebu’s fifth district, tied the collector to “a conspiracy to corner all import bond transactions in Cebu and other Central Visayas ports” at the expense of the small-time insurance agents that manage accounts for the firm.
“She projects herself in the media as an honest person. But this was how she made money in Cagayan de Oro City at the expense of Global Steel Corp.,” he said.
Mangaoang begged off from an interview when Sun.Star Cebu sought her comment via an aide last night, saying she was already tired.
She earlier charged Almendras and one Lelis Lim, a Sterling account agent, before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor for allegedly trying to bribe her and customs lawyer Edward James Dy Buco by leaving an envelope containing money at the bureau’s bond section.
She said the approval of bond transactions is discretionary on the part of the district collector, per provisions of the Customs and Tariff Code.
Almendras has denied the allegations of attempted bribery.
He said he has never met Dy Buco and could never have gone to the BOC office because the district collector has “banned” him from the office.
“Since I became branch manager here, we never bribed anyone from the Bureau of Customs. We are doing a legal business.
We are not importers (and) we are not brokers. We are only an insurance company. Why should we bribe any official from the Bureau of Customs?” he said.
Almendras has filed a complaint against Mangaoang before the anti-graft office and another one before the Office of the President. The latter, he said, has already been endorsed to Finance Secretary Margarito Teves’ office.
Mangaoang’s cohorts, Almendras alleged, include one Pilarcita Pearson, an insurance agent in Cagayan de Oro, and Almendras’ boss, Rafael del Villar Sr., in Manila.
“I am not afraid to get into trouble with my own company. I can still eat daily without Sterling Insurance. What I cannot afford to participate in is this illegal activity being done at the expense of our agents,” he said when asked about his implication of his boss.
Refusal
The conspiracy, Almendras said in his interview yesterday, became apparent in May this year when his agent, Lim, followed up the renewal of the re-export bond Sterling Insurance issued to the BOC in behalf of her client, the Aboitiz-owned Supercat Fest Ferry Corp., for one of its cruise vessels.
That account involved over P21 million.
He said Mangaoang, who had just gotten assigned to the Port of Cebu, refused to renew the bond and, sometime in June, issued an order directing all deputy collectors and others concerned that bond transactions should be sent only to her for action.
The next thing he knew was that Pearson, through the Sterling office in Cagayan de Oro and allegedly upon del Villar’s authority, had already prepared another set of bond transaction documents.
The preparation of a new set of transaction documents caused a conflict between the Sterling offices in Cebu and Cagayan de Oro.
Banned
Pearson prevailed, Almendras said, after Lim refused del Villar’s alleged request that she give Mangaoang half of the commission Lim would get from the Supercat account.
“That would have reached over a hundred thousand,” Almendras revealed.
He said there was another transaction, a warehousing bond worth P2 million for the Pacific Traders and Manufacturing Corp., which Mangaoang also denied.
He publicly questioned the manner of disapproval but got banned from entering the bureau’s office instead.
Almendras said he filed the criminal and administrative graft complaints against Mangaoang the month after.
He impleaded Pearson and del Villar for “committing grave misconduct, dishonesty, grave abuse of authority, violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials.
Retaliation?
“The act of Atty. Lourdes Mangaoang in grabbing the clients of our agents who were serving those clients for more than five to 10 years, and stealing their commissions in the process, using her position as district collector in the Port of Cebu, is not only a violation of (anti-graft laws) but also robbery,” his complaint before the ombudsman read.
He asked that Mangaoang be placed under preventive suspension.
Deputy Ombudsman Primo Miro, in an order dated Aug. 1, days before Mangaoang filed her complaint against Almendras and Lim before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor, found “enough basis to proceed with the administrative and criminal investigation of this case” and directed her to submit a counter-affidavit.
During yesterday’s interview, Almendras said Mangaoang’s filing of a complaint against him before the prosecutor’s office was in retaliation for his filing of the graft case.
Insurance companies like Sterling provide services to importers.
Commission
In the Supercat transaction, Sterling put up the bond money that would otherwise have been paid by Supercat as tariffs.
Supercat brought into the Port of Cebu a new tri-hulled catamaran vessel Supercat had acquired from a foreign firm through a bareboat lease.
The P21-million bond, which Sterling has to renew each year, is sustained with the much lower premium that Supercat has to pay Sterling annually.
The agents who are in charge of the account get commissions based on the premium involved.
The bond will be returned to Sterling when SuperCat, after its bareboat agreement with the tri-hulled catamaran’s original owner expires, sends the vessel out of the Port of Cebu.
(August 13, 2005 issue)
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