Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon. Noy Morcoso lll/INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines – “Miracles at Clark” is how some oldtimers in the Bureau of Customs refer to at least two recent instances when a total of 94 drums of smuggled diesel fuel that the bureau had seized and kept at a warehouse in the Customs Clearance Area at the Clark Freeport were substituted with plain water and sludge.
In a text message to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon said he has directed the bureau’s Intelligence and Investigation Service to “investigate the matter to determine who are liable for the irregularity.”
Ronnie Silvestre, who assumed the post of Clark district customs collector in February, said this was not quite like the miracle in Cana where, according to Biblical account, Jesus Christ converted jars of water into wine at a wedding feast.
“Some people replaced the contents of more than 90 drums of diesel oil with water and dirty industrial oil and obviously made money in the process,” he said. A drum of ordinary diesel oil costs more than P6,000.
Citing President Aquino III’s “daang matuwid” crusade, he said the BOC “should not allow those responsible for the diesel oil switching to get away with what they did.”
Another high Customs official, who asked not to be named, said the Clark Freeport incident was “proof that some people in government do not give a damn about P-Noy’s ‘daang matuwid’ campaign.”
In an April 3 memorandum to Biazon, Silvestre reported the “substitution of 65 drums of diesel fuel at the Customs Clearance Area with 65 drums of water.”
He then called for an “independent investigation” into the matter, stressing the need to “protect the interest of the government.”
The 65 drums, among 156 drums of diesel oil confiscated by the Customs-Clark collection district between 2009 and 2012, were stored for safekeeping at the warehouse facility operated by a Clark Freeport Zone private locator duly licensed by the Clark Development Corp., which is inside the Customs Clearance Area, he said.
In a later memo to the BOC head, dated April 8, Silvestre reported that 29 out of 30 drums of smuggled diesel fuel that were seized from the G2G gasoline station in Barangay (village) San Francisco in Mabalacat, Pampanga, were found to have been replaced with industrial oil.
The drums, containing about 6,692 liters of diesel fuel, were the subject of a warrant of seizure and detention issued on March 13 by the BOC. The fuel, the order said, was “imported in violation of Section 2530 and subsection 3 of the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines.”
In his latest blog on the Internet, Biazon disclosed that “petroleum products are imported into the economic zones duty free supposedly for use within those zones.” However, he added, “these eventually end up in retail stations outside the zones.”
“Proof of this is the fact that the (BOC) fuel marking program has resulted in the confiscation of marked fuel and the inclusion for prosecution of those caught selling the smuggled fuel. Even big players in the industry are not spared, with cases filed against them now pending in the justice system,” he said.