NFA chief, warehouse owner sued for graft

NATIONAL Food Authority (NFA) Administrator Renan Dalisay and businessman Reghis Romero II have been charged with graft in the Office of the Ombudsman for allegedly keeping 506,000 sacks of imported rice from Vietnam in a private warehouse owned by Romero.

In a five-page complaint he filed last Monday, National Coalition of Filipino Consumers director Jayson Luna said the imported rice was stored in Harbour Centre Port Terminal Inc. (HCPTI) without a written consent from the NFA.

Luna said a rice shipment of Vina Foods Inc. from Vietnam entered the country in August through a government-to-government agreement and was unloaded from the MV Excelsis.

“These bags of rice were then placed inside the warehouse of HCPTI owned by Romero. (This) is a violation of the law as HCPTI is not a registered (NFA) warehouse,” he said in his affidavit.

Luna said the imported rice should be stored only in

NFA-accredited warehouses as mandated by law.

He said the NFA itself said in a press statement that HCPTI was not allowed to store imported rice but its “facilities have been used for transshipment of imported rice under the government-to-government rice importation program.”

“The admission by the NFA on the use of the HCPTI facilities is questionable because there are government-accredited facilities like the International Container Services Terminal Inc. and the government-operated South Harbor,” Luna said.

“The NFA, despite knowledge of this illegal storage of imported rice, has not acted on the illegal act,” he added.

Luna said his group had received reports of hundreds of sacks of rice being hauled in and out of the HCPTI facilities in Manila. “After verifying these reports, we agreed to put this issue before the public as it involves substantial public interest,” he said.