Customs job makes former general a snob

CLARK Freeport—Don’t feel slighted if former Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim has become a snob nowadays.

The demeanor, he said, is helpful in his job as deputy commissioner for intelligence at the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to keep away influence peddlers and smugglers.

“We should be cold and distant so that we won’t be approached [by people who pull strings to evade paying customs duties and taxes],” he told reporters in Filipino during a visit to the Port of Clark on Wednesday.

Asked how he was helping introduce reforms in the BOC, one of the agencies perceived to be riddled with corruption, Lim said, “Avoid people who have no professional business dealings with the bureau.”

BOC employees, he said, should also distance themselves from tax evaders and smugglers to prevent collusion.

Lim defined corruption as the circumstance when one gives or takes bribes. But he did not explain how deeply ingrained corruption was in the agency.

Efforts to improve the image of BOC suffered a beating when one of its employees, Paulino Elevado, punched a student during a traffic altercation in January.

Elevado, a clerk, was driving a Porsche when the incident took place. He has not reported for work since.

“Unfortunately, there are incidents and people who are not helpful in our efforts to change the image of our agency,” Lim said.

He said stopping smuggling is among the measures needed to enable the BOC to meet its P360 billion target for 2012. The Port of Clark surpassed the target by 13 percent in 2011.

“I am sure that smugglers are having second thoughts now. [Smuggling] now is not anymore done on a continuing basis. Admittedly, it still happens but I’m sure not in the rate that it was done in the past. We’re showing that our fight is not of the “ningas kugon’’ kind,” he said.

He said among the items being monitored by the agency are illegal drugs.