Not just fine, but no bail for smugglers – Villar

MANILA, Philippines — Moneyed smugglers should languish in jail while their cases are pending in court, Sen. Cynthia Villar said yesterday as a Senate joint panel tackled a proposal to establish anti-agricultural smuggling courts.

During yesterday’s joint hearing of the Senate committees on justice and agriculture, Villar said that smugglers could pay exorbitant fines for the cases filed against them.

The hearing, presided over by Sen. Francis Tolentino, discussed the proposal to establish the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Courts Act.

“The only way you can do to stop them (smugglers) is to jail them. Rich people don’t want to be jailed, if you only want to make them pay, they can afford to pay,” Villar said.

“There should be criminal (provisions). That’s the only deterrent. Criminal cases and then jail them, so that even if we will not be able to sentence them, they stay in jail during the entire period that the cases are heard. That’s enough punishment for them, because they are rich, they don’t care about money, they earn a lot of money. What we can do as a punishment to them is to send them to jail during the (pendency of) cases,” she added.

Villar said moneyed smugglers could afford to pay to have the cases against them dismissed.

“I want them to be jailed while the cases are being tried so they can experience being jailed. I think that’s the only thing (to stop them). They don’t want to experience it, but economic sabotage is non-bailable. They are rich, they can always pay our courts so they can not go to jail,” Villar said.

Villar, chair of the Senate committee on agriculture and food, filed Senate Bill 1963, which seeks to establish new courts amid criticisms from lawmakers and farmers’ groups that no suspected smuggler or trader has been convicted since Republic Act 10845, or the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act of 2016, was enacted.

During the hearing, stakeholders and lawmakers said the Bureau of Customs (BOC) appears to be the cause of the zero-conviction rate.

Rosendo So and Jayson Cainglet of the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (SINAG) said that based on news reports on the raids of the BOC, the Department of Agriculture (DA) and other agencies, the value of alleged smuggled agricultural produce always far exceed the P1-million threshold set by the law for the crime to be classified as economic sabotage, a non-bailable offense where those charged are to be immediately detained.

So said there was a smuggling complaint directly filed by the DA before a court in Mariveles, Bataan as the agency found the BOC seemingly sluggish to act on the case.

He said SINAG and other affected sectors like the farmers would like to directly file complaints against smugglers, but Customs law only allows the BOC to do so.

“We want to file cases but we’re barred from doing so. And we hope to file cases that would lead to reclusion perpetua,” So said in Filipino.

Federation of Philippine Industries chairman Jesus Arranza said it was common for vital documents in the BOC crucial to building a strong case to disappear, so cases are often thrown out of the courts due to lack of evidence.

Tolentino cited provisions in the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA) that states that the Customs commissioner has final say in filing cases before the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“Cases are not moving because there is a ‘hand brake’ being pulled by the BOC,” Tolentino said, even as he pointed out that the bureau has its own lengthy preliminary investigation before a case is elevated to the DOJ or junked internally.

Villar said among the reasons why she was pushing for amendments to the law or Republic Act 11845 is because the BOC is also the one “encouraging” smuggling.

“I cannot imagine that they have the final say when they are the ones encouraging smuggling, that’s why no one has been charged in the past seven years. They should not be the ones deciding because they’re also the ones to blame. There’s smuggling because there’s collusion in the BOC,” Villar said in Filipino.

Karen Ann Yambao, of the legal service of the BOC’s Revenue Collection Monitoring Group, said the agency has filed a total of 22 cases before the DOJ in 2022 and 46 this year.

Yambao clarified that the clearance for the filing of cases from the Commissioner only covers offenses listed in the CMTA, not crimes under the anti-agricultural smuggling law.

She said it would be up to the DOJ to proceed or not with the filing of the cases before the courts. – Paolo Romero, Evelyn Macairan