P9.5B smuggled goods seized last year– BOC

THE Bureau of Customs (BOC) ended the year 2020 with significant accomplishments in its anti-smuggling operation after seizing contrabands and an assortment of smuggled products worth more than P9.52 billion.

Deputy commissioner for revenue collection and monitoring (RCMG) Atty. Vener Baquiran, in reporting to Department of Finance (DOF) secretary, Carlos Dominguez, on the bureau’s accomplishments last year on behalf of Comm. Rey Leonardo Guerrero, said the agency confiscated more than P9.52 billion worth of assorted smuggled goods from the start of January up the third week of December 2020.

Baquiran noted that more than half of the goods seized last year in the country’s various ports, or 53 percent, consisted of “illicit cigarettes” and other tobacco products worth more than P5 billion.

Aside from tobacco products, the value of illegal drugs seized last year was at P1.85 billion; counterfeit goods, P1.02 billion; and, general merchandize, P414 million.

The BOC also apprehended vehicles and accessories worth P354.53 million; agricultural products, P238.49 million; food stuffs, P200 million; personal protective equipment (PPEs) and other medical supplies and cosmetics; P195.57 million.

On the legal side, Baquiran, who also heads the bureau’s ‘RATS’ (Run after the Smuggler) program, said they also filed 70 criminal cases against 244 suspected smugglers from January up to the first week of December and padlocked 19 customs bonded warehouses (CBWs) for various violations of customs laws.

Baquiran said another 40 members of customs common bonded warehouses (CCBWs) were also closed down during the same period.

He added that the Customs was able to inspect 151 CBWs and 249 members of CCBWs since January.

Meanwhile, two persons who claimed a package of ‘kush marijuna’ from the United States were apprehended by combined elements from the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in another successful ‘controlled delivery operation’ in Batangas province.

In a statement last week, the BOC identified the suspects as Van Joshua Magpantay and Johnengle Hernandez, who were apprehended by the joint team inside a “vape shop” in Lipa City last January 9, 2021, while in possession of the illegal drugs with a total weight of 500 grams half a kilo) and with an estimated value of P600,000.

Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) district collector, Carmelita ‘Mimel’ Talusan, in a report to customs commissioner, Rey Leonardo ‘Jagger’ Guerrero, added that unknown to the suspects, the NAIA-IADITG (Inter-Agency Drug Interdiction Task Group), had already ‘profiled’ the shipment that landed earlier at the Central Mail Exchange Center (CMEC) in Pasay City and sent by a certain ‘’Niña Manual’ from California, USA.

The shipment in two vacuum sealed transparent plastic bags was misdeclared as ‘musical instruments consigned to a certain ‘Dimitria Escalona’ of Batangas.

The apprehension came on the heels of the confiscation only two days earlier, on January 7, 2021, of 535 pieces of “Ecstasy” worth more than P1 million by the NAIA district also at the CMEC.

It was the first successful anti-drug operation at the country’s premier airport this year.