Friday, February 22, 2008 Customs opens office for anti-smuggling team
THE Bureau of Customs (BOC) opened its Run After The Smugglers (Rats) office at the Port of Cebu yesterday to investigate those who engage in the shipment of untaxed goods to the country.
Rats-Cebu is headed by lawyer Edward M. Campos. It is under Visayas Coordinator Bernie Evangelista.
Lawyer Reynaldo Umali, customs deputy commissioner for revenue and collection monitoring group (RCMG), said Rats-Cebu will profile smuggling in the Visayas, build cases and prosecute those responsible.
District Collector Ricardo Belmonte said Rats-Cebu is important because BOC authorities don’t want to go to court with weak evidence.
Evidence
“We don’t want to file charges against suspected smugglers only to be dismissed by the court. We have to gather strong evidence to avoid dismissal of cases,” Umali said.
Umali said that since Rats was created, they already filed 60 cases against 265 respondents with city prosecutors’ offices. Of the number, 24 cases were already filed in court.
“There will be continuous filing against other smugglers. In fact, five other cases will be filed in Manila tomorrow,” Umali said.
According to Umali, Campos will coordinate with Port of Cebu legal division chief James Edward Dy Buco in building strong cases against suspected smugglers in Cebu.
Belmonte, on the other hand, said they will leave to Rats to file the charges to avoid public suspicion that cases are whitewashed.
Umali said that the United States Assistance for International Development (USAID) donated US$3.1 million worth of computers, training and other equipment to improve the government’s anti-smuggling campaign.
“There’s no cash given by USAID under this program,” Umali said.
Part of the equipment donated by USAID is the computer being used by Rats. The unit stores a list of accredited importers. If an importer is not accredited with BOC, the import entry will automatically be rejected.
If an import entry is filed through the Internet, the customs authorities will check under the Client Profile Registration System. If the name of the importer is not in the list, the import entry will be rejected.
Paper trail
Umali said that under the new system, it will be easy to go through a paper trail of smuggled vehicles that would lead to the prosecution of brokers and importers.
“Assuming that the smugglers will succeed in bringing untaxed goods, specially that there is no such thing as perfect system and there are hackers, they can easily be traced,” Umali said.
Belmonte said that in accrediting importers, the applicants are required to submit business permit, barangay clearances, among other documents.
He said that the accreditation of importers will not be renewed if they have derogatory records or they changed the nature of their business. (EOB)
