In an interview with Punto during his visit this week to the Port of Clark, Lapeña said various government agencies have been tapped to look into reports of questionable lifestyles of some of its personnel all over the country.
“We have 17 major ports and the rest are minor ones, and there will be no exemption in the lifestyle checks that are being done,” he said after turning over to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) some P90 million worth of shabu which his personnel uncovered in boxes fl own here by a forwarding company for destinations in Cavite.
Lapeña said BoC personnel whose lifestyles and properties do not obviously match their income would be “checked,” even as he vowed fairness and objectivity in the process.
During a Senate hearing on the P6.4-billion shabu shipment which passed Customs check last year, Lapeña admitted corruption in the BoC.
“When I assumed as Commissioner of Customs, the information I got there was this ‘tara’ system. The ‘tara’ system is a ‘lagay’ system to facilitate the movement of goods of certain businessmen,” he explained.
Also last year, the House Ways and Means Committee said corruption was “systematized” in the BoC during the short term of former Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon, costing the government P43.8 billion in lost revenues. This was contained in a report to the House plenary, through the Committee on Rules.
“To further systematize the corruption within the bureau, Commissioner Faeldon created the Command Center (Comcen). Faeldon removed the powers of the various Bureau offices to issue and lift alert orders and centralized it into the Comcen. By doing so Commissioner Faeldon and his cohorts used the Comcen as a conduit of corruption and monopolizing the collection of tara from Customs Players,” the report said.
The report noted that “in order to systematize the entire ‘tara’ system, benchmarking was resorted to by both corrupt bureau personnel and Customs players. Presently, imported shipments are benchmarked at P40,000 per container regardless of the value of the imported goods.”
The panel also felt that Faeldon “engaged incompetent, willful, and neglectful bureau personnel who are not qualified for the job. Majority of the deputy commissioners appointed were not organic from the bureau, and had little or no experience in Customs practice. Former military mean who are considered of close personal relations to Faeldon assumed 13 top posts in the bureau or were appointed as district collectors.”
The panel also noted that in addition to appointing incompetent top bureau officials, “Faeldon also engaged consultants to perform confidential and management functions that should only be performed by organic personnel, circumventing the state’s policy on public accountability.”
