Car smuggling rampant in Subic

CUSTOMS Commissioner Napoleon “Boy” Morales has been urged to do a major revamp at the Port of Subic particularly in the intelligence enforcement over the alleged protection racket on car smugglers at the said economic zone.

People’s Tonight gathered that a certain “Ric Tubig” -- a well known car importer at Port of Subic in Olongapo City -- has been shortchanging the government of needed taxes and duties in connivance with some Customs personnel particularly those at the Customs Intelligence Unit.

Due to poor intelligence gathering a volume of motor vehicle importations have been spirited out from the said economic zone without paying correct taxes and duties such as through undervaluation, misclassification and misdeclaration.

The group’s modus operandi is to fix all the importation documents of several locators who were engaged in motor importation by filing the entry manually, meaning, that the documents will no longer be encoded in the computer system of the said port to avoid being detected or by different Customs assessment and law enforcement unit.

People’s Tonight gathered that Tubig and his gang intentionally will not accredited their importation permits to avoid their being filed in the computer system by means of the so-called “first and last” importations.

According to the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines (TCCP), any individual has an authority to import from the country origin even without the accreditation to import provided that their supposed shipments would be their first and last importation.

Through this scheme, hundreds of right-hand-drive sports utility vehicles (SUVs), luxury cars and other motor vehicles are being released depriving the government of collecting correct taxes and duties.

Alex T. Silva
People's Tonight