Car smuggling has been a perennial problem in the Philippines and though there are times the issue mellowed from time to time, it gets back again into full blown ” hot” topic when another high profile figure is involved. This time around, a Mindanao-based US businessman, with residences in Cagayan de Oro and Bukidnon in particular is in the news allegedly for smuggling luxury vehicles into the country. Lynard Allan Bigcas, a well known car importer in the country, owner of forwarding companies in the U.S. and someone who takes great fancy on expensive motorbikes, is now being the subject of investigation from investigating authorities in the Philippines as more than twenty five cars and motorbikes as of this writing were confiscated from him during a raid into his houses by the combined forces of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and Philippine National Police (PNP)..
The FBI’s confirmation that some of these smuggled vehicles imported to the Philippines are indeed were reported missing in the United States makes this a stolen case as well. One particular such vehicle, a Harley Davidson Martin Brothers, was owned by Hollywood screenwriter Skip Woods and reportedly costing $80,000 or 3.4 million pesos. Said vehicle was already sent back to the United States.
In a large scale illegal activity such as car smuggling, it is more likely that one smuggler or group of smuggler cannot pursue and survive the said illegal activity successfully without help from influential people. It is as close as we can get from reality. Without influential people such as politicians or high ranking military officials protecting or taking part directly or indirectly on it, this car smuggling business in the Philippines cannot at all prosper for sure.
As it is, smuggling is the practice of using illegal trade channels or fake foreign trade declarations for the purpose of evading payment of duties and taxes. In the past, smuggling activities were generally confined to the Philippines’ private ports, which are generally plenty considering the country’s long coastline of 7,000 islands. However, it suddenly become so prevalent now that even the country’s free ports become venues to smuggling whereby smuggled products are shipped and unloaded as ordinary goods for trading in the local market. Smuggled stuff like garments, home appliances, jewelry, electronic gadgets, second-hand and luxury cars are flooding the local market. This hurt the businesses of small Filipino traders as it wipes out their earnings.
In the case of the latest “hot-car” issue involving the prominent Mindanao-based car dealer Bigcas, it is hotter than that as there was no undervalue of misdeclaration involved. Lawyer of the accused Bigcas claimed the seized cars did not appear in the records of the Bureau of Customs because they were not purchased in the U.S. The authorities are now investigating which port of entry does the seized goods entered into the country. There was no report at all that it passed through container terminals of Mindanao that would include those from Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and Ozamis, as claimed by Marvin Mison, duty collector of Bureau of Customs in Region 10. With all these facts or fallacy intertwining, it looks like there is indeed a smuggle syndicate operating in the country.
Many sectors in the society want to make smuggling an act of economic sabotage since it hurts the country in more ways than one. The government is loosing billions of pesos in revenues because of smuggling activities. These revenues foregone due to unscrupulous smugglers could have been used for more important economic or social services. Smuggling hurts the economy. It affects local industries in a negative way. The manufacturing sector is down, companies lose profit and many small traders have gone bankrupt. Smuggling wipes out jobs in the local economy and destroys the livelihood of farmers. It can displace vegetable farmers, shoe workers and auto parts industry workers.
As there are fake foreign trade declarations in smuggling, these cause distortion in international trade data and in policies formulated from it. The distortion normally arise as a consequence of the fact that smuggling if successfully carried out results in omission of some import and export shipments from the data on foreign trade which are normally at the custom’s frontier.
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