Coral poaching dubbed ‘new muro-ami’
Can a consignee be unaware that millions of pesos worth of black sea corals and other forms of marine life were being smuggled under his name?
It’s apparently possible as per the alibi given by Exequiel Navarro, who was identified as the consignee in Manila of the confiscated items earlier estimated at P35 million.
Accompanied by his lawyer, Navarro on Monday appeared at the Senate committee investigation of massive marine resource poaching, which Environment Secretary Ramon Paje described as the “new muro-ami.”
“I believe that the collection of the seashells and black corals is now the new muro-ami,” he said in the hearing, citing the fishing technique involving young divers and which destroys corals in the process.
“I will not be surprised if it’s also using children in extracting (them) because children, particularly in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, are good divers. They can stay under water for more than 20 minutes and it’s more than enough time to extract black corals.”
Navarro maintained that he had no knowledge that the items shipped under his name were smuggled.
He said he began doing business with JKA Transport System, which shipped the contraband, some nine months ago and received P500 for every container released at Pier 15 at the Manila Port Area.
Navarro also admitted that he had received a shipment of lumber and frozen squids on separate occasions from JKA Transport.
Unbelievable
Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, chair of the committee on environment, did not buy Navarro’s position that his involvement was limited to receiving cargoes.
“I don’t think I will believe your story, that you don’t know the contents of the cargoes that were being shipped here from Zamboanga,” he told Navarro in Filipino.
“For an operation that big, I think it’s not believable that (members of the syndicate) don’t connive with anyone here in Manila in shipping the contraband out of the country,” he said.
The senator added: “It appears that JKA Transport has been used or is being used by syndicates to transport illegally poached contraband.”
Deputy Commissioner Horacio Suanshing of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) said a consignee was supposed to know what was inside a cargo. “Whatever is the content of the container, the consignee is liable (for it),” he said.
Zubiri ordered the issuance of subpoenas to Kim Atillano, owner of the Zamboanga-based JKA Transport, Ireneo Penuliar, said to be working in the company’s Manila branch, and Olivia Li and husband Joe Pring, aka Joe Ping of Li and Lim Trading. The group will be summoned for the hearing next week.
Cost of destruction
Lawyer Antonio Oposa, an environmentalist and recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, said it was not enough that people behind the destruction of coral reefs and smuggling of marine resources be slapped with criminal charges, as had been filed in the Department of Justice.
Oposa said the cost of destruction was “beyond economic estimation, priceless.”
“We should include multimillion—if not multi, multimillion—environmental damages,” he told the Senate committee, adding that the government should identify buyers of rare marine resources in the international community.
“When the buying stops, the killing stops too … Let us bring this matter to the international (community) if only to tell the world that we are not tolerating this,” he said.
Oposa also suggested an “Al Capone-style” approach to prosecuting the perpetrators, meaning the Bureau of Internal Revenue should also go after their tax liabilities.
He was referring to the American gangster in the 1920s who was jailed—not for his many criminal activities—but for tax evasion.
Policy on cargoes
Also scrutinized in the hearing was the absence of a clear policy on the inspection of cargoes.
Officials from the BOC, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), Maritime Industry Authority, PNP Maritime Group, and the Philippine Coast Guard gave different answers on when they should inspect a container.
Suansing said domestic cargoes were usually not opened for inspection, unless authorities received a reliable tip that they contained illegal items.
Director Asis Perez of the BFAR said the opening of a container required “probable cause.”
He said inspecting every cargo would also “delay trading,” but later committed to improving the inspection system.
With the way authorities had been dealing with cargoes, Zubiri said one could only imagine how many other smuggled items had been shipped since 2007, when an arrest similar to the black sea coral case was made.
“I dread to think about how many shipments have been made from 2007 to 2011,” he said.
Paje said he had written Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo last week, asking his department to “help us identify and unmask” local government units (LGUs) that were either involved or doing nothing about the smuggling of marine resources in their respective areas.
He noted that shells and corals were found within the 15-kilometer area of municipal waters, which is “exclusively under the jurisdiction of the mayors or LGUs.”
