MANILA, Philippines — A Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) division should either be designated or created to handle agricultural smuggling cases in the country, said Judge Gener Gito of the Philippine Judges Association.
Gito floated the idea at the Tuesday hearing of the Senate Justice and Human Rights committee on the proposed measure seeking the establishment of anti-agricultural smuggling courts in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cebu, and Davao, granting them jurisdiction over cases on smuggling, hoarding, profiteering and cartelizing of agricultural products.
But instead of creating new courts, Gito said a CTA division could take charge of handling agricultural smuggling cases in the country.
“If the intention of Congress is to elevate the rank of the judges who would hear smuggling cases, instead of actually creating a court, another division may be added to the Court of Tax Appeals, which will be designated to hear and decide smuggling cases,” he said.
Citing data from the Department of Justice, Gito pointed out that only nine large-scale agricultural smuggling cases were filed in court between 2016 and February 2023.
The creation of four separate anti-smuggling courts will need a total of 15 Justices, entailing a heftier budget, he noted.
In an interview after the hearing, Senator Francis Tolentino said this position was the seeming “consensus” from the discussions.
“It seemed like the consensus earlier…the position of the Philippine Judges Association that in the Court of Tax Appeals, a division should be designated or a division should be created to address smuggling. That’s it. No longer Regional Trial Court level. We’ll go straight to the Court of Tax Appeals,” he said partly in Filipino.
A decision of a CTA division is appealable to the CTA En Banc and may be further appealed to the Supreme Court.
“Because only a few cases have been filed, one Court of Tax Appeals division would do,” Tolentino said, noting that this would also require a smaller budget.
Tolentino said coordination between the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Department of Justice must also be improved.
“There shouldn’t be a conflict between the two. BOC should help with immediately supplying the documents needed since they get the first encounter with smugglers. The problem is – somewhere along the way, there are delays in the transmission of evidence and documents because there’s discretion on the part of the Commissioner of Customs. So that should be clipped or trimmed down,” he pointed out.
The Customs Modernization and Tariff Act states that: “No civil or criminal action for the recovery of duties or the enforcement of any fine, penalty or forfeiture under this Act shall be filed in court without the approval of the Commissioner [of Customs].”
But lawyer Karen Yambao of the BOC legal service had earlier argued during the hearing that the approval of the BOC Commissioner is limited to the referral of the case to the DOJ.
Yambao said a total of 24 cases of large-scale agricultural smuggling were filed in 2022 and 46 cases in 2023.
None, she noted, have resulted in imprisonment since all cases are still up for preliminary investigation with the DOJ.
DOJ state counsel Florina Agtarap, meanwhile, said they received 159 large-scale agricultural smuggling cases from the BOC and the Department of Agriculture between 2016 and February 2023.
Although nine have been filed in court, 76, or about 48 percent of the total cases, were dismissed after prosecutors found no probable cause.
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