BOC probes pilferage of seized diesel at Clark warehouse

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Customs is looking into reports that 135 drums of diesel fuel that they had seized and kept at a warehouse at the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga were stolen and substituted with plain water.

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Between 2009 and 2012, a total of 156 drums of confiscated smuggled diesel oil were stored at the Customs Clearance Area at Clark Freeport, Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla said.

“An inventory done last June 14 showed that only 21 of the drums contained diesel and the rest were already filled with water,” he disclosed.

In a statement, he also said they had “transferred the remaining drums of diesel and placed these under guard. We are investigating how the pilferage occurred and who should be held liable for the loss.”

Sevilla said the BOC has sought the help of the Philippine National Police in investigating an undisclosed number of employees of the private storage facility where the seized fuel was initially stored.

Sometime in mid-April 2013, then Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that he had directed the bureau’s Intelligence and Investigation Service to probe the disappearance of 94 drums of diesel oil from Clark Freeport Zone and determine who were liable for the irregularity.

Ronnie Silvestre, then chief of the Customs-Clark collection district, said “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.”

In an April 3 memorandum to Biazon, Silvestre reported the “substitution of 65 drums of diesel fuel with 65 drums of water.”

In a later memo to the then BOC head, he said that “29 out of 30 drums of smuggled diesel fuel that were confiscated from the G2G gasoline station in Mabalacat, Pampanaga, were found to have been replaced with industrial oil.”

The drums, containing about 66,692 liters of diesel oil, were the subject of a warrant of seizure and detention by the bureau.

The fuel, the order said, was “imported in violation of Section 2530 of the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines.”

Biazon had said “petroleum products are imported into the economic zones duty free supposedly for use within those zones.”

However, “some of these eventually end up in retail stations outside the economic zones,” he added.

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