Suspected smuggler Davidson Bangayan, also known as David Tan. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Customs Commissioner John Sevilla on Thursday said his office so far had no case against Davidson Bangayan—who is believed to be the suspected rice smuggler David Tan—even as Sevilla appealed to the Department of Justice to act with dispatch on the rice smuggling cases the Bureau of Customs (BOC) had already filed with it.
“Our appeal is (for the DOJ) to act immediately on the (smuggling) cases. It’s not only Vhong Navarro who needs justice but also the farmers,” said Sevilla, in a veiled criticism of the DOJ’s quick action on the complaint of assault and extortion that the comedian and television host filed against a group.
Sevilla also called on the five regional trial courts that had issued injunctions against the BOC’s seizure of alleged smuggled rice shipments to think of the “welfare of the farmers and not only of the importers bringing in the rice shipments that did not have the approval of the government.”
Sevilla was at the DOJ to file his first smuggling case under the BOC’s Run After the Smugglers (RATS) program since assuming the top customs post last year.
He filed smuggling charges against six officers of the San Carlos Multi-Purpose Cooperative (Sacamuco) and its broker for the unlawful importation of more than 28,000 sacks of rice valued at P34 million.
Charged with violation of the Tariff and Customs Code and the Revised Penal Code were Sacamuco chair Marvic Canillo, board members Felipe Gamuyao, Felipe Paas Jr., Aurelio Tome Jr. and Percy Reyes, as well as the cooperative’s manager, Doris Ortega, and customs broker Marvin Cortez.
Sacamuco had allegedly misdeclared its shipment, saying it had brought in from Thailand only 380 sacks of rice in each of 55 20-foot container vans in August and September last year. But authorities found out the shipment had come from Vietnam and that each container van held as many as 520 sacks of rice.
“Let us not forget that in every incidence of smuggling of rice, it’s the farmers who get hurt and we hope that (the case we filed against Sacamuco) will serve as a warning against importers to follow the right process and not smuggle rice,” Sevilla said.
Under RATS, the BOC has filed 22 rice-related smuggling cases in the DOJ. It had seized more than P1.2-billion worth of illegally imported rice last year.
At a press briefing on Thursday, Sevilla admitted that the bureau had “so far no case against Davidson Bangayan as an individual.”
He said the BOC had no record of either Bangayan or David Tan being a consignee of rice shipments. He explained that the BOC could only go after the consignees of shipments that did not have import permits.
But Sevilla said he had asked the bureau’s legal department to study whether a financier of consignees without import permits could also be found to have violated the customs law.
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima told a Senate inquiry last week that Bangayan controlled the importation of rice by financing farmers’ cooperatives bidding for import permits from the National Food Authority.
The customs chief said the “main challenge” the bureau now faced in the fight against rice smuggling were the injunctions issued against it by five regional trial courts in Manila, Batangas and Davao.
Meanwhile, Sen. Cynthia Villar on Thursday said the Senate would ensure that Bangayan would not escape prosecution and that some steps toward this were now being taken.
A request was being prepared to have Bangayan included in the Bureau of Immigration’s hold-departure list, Villar said in a phone interview from Digos City, Davao, where the Senate committee on agriculture, which she heads, is conducting a public consultation on the plight of coconut farmers.
“We are also asking for the cancellation of his passport,” she added.
Villar said the Senate would also file perjury charges on Friday against Bangayan in the Department of Justice for allegedly lying about his identity. She said the senators believed that Bangayan and Tan were one and the same person.—With a report from Allan A. Nawal, Inquirer Mindanao
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