Thursday, April 03, 2008 Imported rice found in raid By Karlon N. Rama Sun.Star Staff Reporter
A JOINT team from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the National Food Authority raided a Mandaue City warehouse yesterday and found an estimated 30,000 sacks of rice imported from Vietnam that, they said, shouldn’t have been there.
The raid was not about the rice importation itself, but about the apparently illegal warehousing activity, said Atty. Ernesto Macabare of the NBI.
Businessman Regan King, who confirmed owning the shipment in a separate interview, said the rice importation and its storage at the warehouse were above-board.
He lambasted the government agencies involved in the raid, saying they are only delaying the release of the rice and compounding the supply shortage that is driving prices up.
“Our importation can really help increase the supply and stop the shortage,” King said.
Gerald Plaza, a colleague of King, said the agencies, by seizing the rice, are forcing them to pay higher warehousing fees–an expense that they are forced to transfer to the consumers by hiking the price per kilo.
However, public information officer Edgar Diez of the National Food Authority (NFA) said the warehouse is not among those authorized by the NFA for rice storage and warehousing.
Storage
The fact that the rice was brought there violates Sec. 29 of Presidential Decree 4, the law that created the National Grains Authority, later renamed the NFA.
Not being recognized for rice storage means it is not among the warehouses being monitored by the NFA.
This makes the warehouse a convenient place to hoard rice or repack government rice so it can be sold at standard commercial prices, said an agent of the NBI.
Meanwhile, NFA retailers are being monitored to make sure they sell government-subsidized rice to indigent families, amid worries that hoarding will create an artificial shortage that pushes prices upward.
The NFA revealed yesterday that at least 24 rice retailers under the Tindahan ni Gloria and Bigasan ng Bayan program have been suspended pending investigation.
The violations include alleged overpricing and the sudden disappearance of supplies, said public information officer Edgar Diez.
Watch
As for yesterday’s raid, NBI Special Investigator Arnel Pura, in an interview, said they had agents monitor the warehouse for several days prior to submitting their application for the warrant.
He said they obtained jurisdiction over the issue pursuant to a recent memorandum of agreement between NBI Director Nestor Mantaring and the NFA.
An operative from the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Section (CIIS) was at the warehouse when the raiding team arrived past 5 p.m. to serve the search warrant.
Hours after the raid, an official from the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC), as well as people who identified themselves as members of the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group, also arrived.
Custody
The PITC is the government corporation that imported the grains, in behalf of farmers’ cooperatives.
The raid happened only minutes after a coordination meeting between the NBI and the NFA at the NFA office along Banilad Road, Cebu City.
Macabare, the NBI’s second-in-command in Central Visayas, represented the agency to the meeting held at the NFA office.
During the raid, Macabare announced that the NBI and the NFA team was jointly taking custody of the warehouse by locking it down, including the bags of rice found inside, in compliance with the warrant.
It is now up to the warehouse owner, he said, to submit the needed documents for the release of the warehouse and its contents.
Former Cebu Ports Authority manager Mariano C.J. Martinez owns the warehouse but, based on a contract presented to agents during the raid, it is on lease to King.
Lease
The warrant, signed by Regional Trial Court (RTC) Executive Judge Fortunato de Gracia, identified it as building 52 of the Mandaue North Central Castelex Compound in Barangay Cabangcalan.
King, in the interview last night, said it is normal for Martinez not to have the NFA license that the joint NBI and NFA raiding team was looking for, simply because he wouldn’t need it.
He explained that Martinez wasn’t into the business of storing rice, but was simply leasing warehouse space to clients like him.
King said it is his company that has the necessary license.
He showed a copy of an “NFA application for registration/license” that bore a signature but without the name of the NFA regional director or provincial manager or the officer-in-charge.
The document indicated that Jolli Trading International Inc. has a warehouse located in “52 Mandaue North Central, Cabancalan, Mandaue City.”
King also showed a separate NFA certificate granting “Jollitraders Int’l Inc.” a grains business license. He said he was not able to give the NBI-NFA team a copy but will do so today.
Coops
He said they didn’t even need the special license because they bought the rice from authorized farmers’ cooperatives that, in turn, had it imported by the PITC, a government-owned company recognized by the NFA.
“We just secured one because we half-expected something like this to happen,” he said.
He said that the CIIS’ supposed monitoring of their shipment may even be construed as harassment because the Bureau of Customs knew of the importation.
He submitted papers indicating how the PITC, represented by Managing Director Mario Leygo, sent written reports to Customs Commissioner Napoleon Morales regarding the shipments.
A letter, dated March 31, mentioned the arrival of 500 metric tons of A-1 White Rice for Metro Grains Marketing last March 27.
Another letter, also signed by Leygo and addressed to Morales, mentioned the arrival of 138 metric tons of Broken Rice A-1 Special for the Pacarzo Multi-Purpose Cooperative the following day.
That batch arrived together with 100 metric tons for the Gideon Multi-Purpose Cooperative, 125 metric tons for the Moonlight Multi-Purpose Cooperative, and 125 metric tons for the Flores Multi-Purpose Cooperative.
Provisional
All the letters were stamped received by the Office of the Commissioner on April 1 and received by the Port of Cebu office yesterday.
For his part, Dante Bangayan, the PITC official who went to the warehouse late yesterday afternoon, opined that the NFA should have known about the arrival of the rice. He cited inter-agency relations.
And while he could not give details as to who contacted whom over what, he stressed that the importation was above-board.
Leonito Santiago, a customs agent seen at the scene, agreed.
He said the rice came from the Cebu International Port and was just “provisionally released” to the consignee—10 farmers’ cooperatives, including the Giling Samahang Nayon Multipurpose Cooperatives—pending verification of the submitted importation documents and the inventory.
He said it is being guarded upon orders of Deputy District Collector Elvira Cruz. He said he has been with the rice shipment since March 20.
Customs Assistant Assessment Chief Florante Ricardo has reportedly confirmed the payment of proper duties, while District Collector Ricardo Belmonte has declared the PITC rice shipment as “legal.”
Santiago said he didn’t know if the warehouse had the necessary documentation, adding that it was the warehouse selected by the supposed consignees; in reality, King, who pre-bought it from them.
The shipment was provisionally released so as not to take up so much space at the CIP and to spare the consignees demurrage costs.
Because the Bureau of Customs hadn’t fully released it, Santiago said the NFA and NBI joint team didn’t have the authority to take custody of anything.
Still, he said he is referring the matter to higher officials.
Macabare, together with supervising agents Ermie Monsanto and Rennan Oliva, maintained that this is for the court to decide after they make their report on the service of the warrant and the conduct of the search. (With EOB)
