LAND Transportation Office (LTO) Central Visayas Regional Director Victor Emmanuel Caindec will continue and pursue its fight against five motorcycle dealers as Senator Richard Gordon urged the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in filing tax fraud charges against the dealers immediately.
Gordon has called on once again the BIR to file charges to these dealers for purportedly defrauding the government of billions of pesos from their sales of the motorcycle.
“The BIR should lose no time in running after these motorcycle dealers who cheated the government of billions of pesos worth of revenue that could have been used in its pandemic response,” said Senator Gordon in a press release last December 4, 2021.
The Department of Finance has endorsed to BIR the filing of tax fraud charges against these dealers owned by the Du Family.
"I will pursue and I will prevail, in the interest of truth and justice, especially to the millions of ordinary, helpless Filipino motorcycle owners who have been deprived of their rights to due and fair process in the protection of their rights to motorcycle ownership," said Caindec.
The director described these dealers as "illegally charging exorbitant interest rates, deny buyers proper ownership registration documents and worse, deliberately cheat the government of taxes."
These dealers are Du Ek Sam Inc., Desmark Corporation, DES Marketing Inc., Premio Corporation, and DES Strong Inc.
"All of the actions taken are consistent to our perspective that the quantum of evidence and documents uncovered by LTO Central Visayas’ investigations into specific dealer malpractices suggest that the complex and intricate abuse of the agency's MAIRDOEs program was meant to mask and perpetuate a potentially large-scale corporate tax evasion process," added Caindec.
Under the MAIRDOES system, these five dealers would get the installment money from motorcycle buyers without giving them registration papers or license plates. Instead, the motorcycle buyer only gets invoices for his purchase.
The filing of tax fraud charges was the result of the investigation conducted by the Senate blue ribbon committee looking at the delay by LTO and dealers in the implementation of the Republic Act (RA) 11235 or Motorcycle Crime Prevention Act earlier this year.
"In our presentations to the Senate Blue Ribbon investigation hearings, administrative actions at LTO Central office and criminal case actions filed, our accusations of these malpractices, specifically on the presence of multiple commercial documents reflecting variable amounts covering exactly similar transactions, have remained uncontroverted to this day, notwithstanding maneuvers of the dealers to harass, malign and intimidate the regional director of LTO into withdrawing legal actions already filed," Caindec reiterated.
The director also acknowledged the efforts of Senator Gordon from the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee Investigation earlier this year up to this day of urging the BIR for the immediate filing of tax fraud charges against the dealers. (PR)