CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The Bureau of Customs (BOC)10 (Northern Mindanao) confiscated 13 knocked-down mini-vans and a military jeep imported from Japan on Thursday afternoon.
Oliver Valiente, chief of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service (CIIS) in Northern Mindanao, estimated the value of the recently confiscated vehicles at PHP15 million.
The vehicles are now stored at the Mindanao Container Terminal in Tagoloan town, Misamis Oriental.
The cargo, he said, was declared as “used truck parts” but turned out to be disassembled Mazda Scrum mini-vans.
Valiente said the decision of the CIIS to conduct a spot check on the cargo was based on the profiling of shipments.
“If I see a red flag, I instantly have the container vans examined. Most of the spot checks we conducted have resulted in the discovery of the shipment as ‘misdeclared items’,” he said.
A military jeep, Valiente said, was also thrown in inside the container van – an item that needed a separate special permit.
“Our hunch was correct that the shipment contained other items other than what was declared in the documents,” he said.
Before the examination, Valiente said he requested lawyer Elvira Cruz, newly installed BOC-10 district collector, to issue an alert order.
He said his office also reported their findings to deputy commissioner Raniel Ramiro and CIIS director Jeoffrey Tacio for appropriate action.
It can be recalled that the BOC-10 has destroyed PHP21 million worth of imported jeeps on June 18, the day Cruz was installed as the district collector for the region.
Meanwhile, BOC-10 announced that for the month of June this year, the agency collected PHP2.87 billion, surpassing its PHP2.82 target.
Source: Philippines News Agency
