Amid calls for his head for allegedly failing to stop smuggling, Commissioner Rozzano Rufino Biazon on Friday disclosed that the Bureau of Customs had foiled an attempt to smuggle into the country rice worth P1.2 billion through the Port of Cebu.
Customs authorities, led by Deputy Commissioner Danilo Lim, on Monday seized 5,000 bags of rice worth P9 million at the Mindanao Container Terminal in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental, that Lim said were smuggled in from Vietnam.
The Senate committee on agriculture has asked the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to look into the proliferation of dummy firms that reportedly conduct business with the National Food Authority to corner rice importation permits.
Officials of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) on Tuesday faced a hostile House committee over their apparent failure to sanction a local consignee implicated in the smuggling of nearly P500-million worth of Indian rice last April.
The Bureau of Customs on Thursday charged before the Department of Justice five officers of an importing firm and their broker for the allegedly attempting to smuggle into the Subic Freeport Zone 20,000 bags of rice from Vietnam worth about P30 million.
Less than two months after the seizure of an allegedly smuggled P430-million worth of Indian rice, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) seized and detained on Friday a Vietnamese vessel carrying P200 million worth of undocumented rice imports. The shipment arrived in Legazpi, Albay, two weeks ago.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile has expressed concern over the unscrupulous use of the National Food Authority’s (NFA) import permits to provide legal cover for smuggled rice that find their way to the country’s ports.
The Senate on Wednesday detained the president of a grains traders federation after the committee on agriculture cited him for contempt for “lying” during the panel’s inquiry into the alleged smuggling of P450-million worth of rice from India.
Senators agreed Tuesday night to cite in contempt two witnesses in their investigation of the alleged rice smuggling at Subic Freeport.
Some lawmakers believe the government’s decision to lower its rice-import quota this year may have spurred the smuggling of this staple into the domestic market.
Senator Juan Ponce Enrile on Wednesday threatened to hold in contempt a representative of a local consignment company during their committee hearing on the alleged rice smuggling in Subic Bay Freeport.
The Bureau of Customs (BOC) has made formal seizure of what it calls its “biggest smuggled rice haul”: Some 420,000 50-kilogram bags of Indian white rice that were abandoned in early April here.
