CLARK FREEPORT — Two employees of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) have been implicated in the smuggling of P100-million worth of Chinese phones and watches flown into this freeport via UPS.
Agents of Task Force Aguila of the Clark Development Corp. (CDC) intercepted at a checkpoint at the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway here last Friday two trucks loaded with boxes containing close to 7,000 units of Vivo, Xiaomi and Huawei phones and watches valued at P100 million.
In a report, the task force said the trucks were apparently headed to Manila. They were initially misdeclared and undervalued, the task force said.
The task force said the contraband items named one Marvin Magalicar as consignee who turned out to be the driver of one of the trucks.
Magalicar, however, later passed on the culpability to his boss whom he named as one Jefferson Gan whom he identied as a BOC officer, as the owner of the items in one truck.
The other truck driver whose name was not immediately available, also claimed that the items in the truck he was driving belonged to another BOC employee he named as Jairus Reyes.
Both BOC employees are based here. They could not be reached by phone at their BOC office.
The drivers admitted to probers that in the past, they had picked up similar items from the UPS facility here and delivered them to a building on Arellano St. In Makati City.
The boxes were found to contain Chinse phones whose retail cost ranged from P15.000 to P25,000.
