Ombuds kicks out 2 Cebu BIR men

The Office of the Ombudsman has dismissed from service two BIR officers in Cebu City for separate acts of graft and corruption.

In approving the dismissal of revenue officer Dina Neri and revenue examiner Romeo "Jimmy" Napoles, Ombudsman Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez said she hopes this would serve as a lesson for other government employees not to engage in hanky panky.

Neri was assigned with BIR District Office 82 in Cebu City while Napoles was detailed at BIR-South located at Natalio Bacalso Avenue.

According to the complaint against Neri, she failed to remit to the government the P220,000 in tax payments she collected from lawyer Domingo Amores who was acting in representation of the estate of the late Wilfredo Faustino Jr.

Neri also failed to submit a counter-affidavit that would have controverted the allegations made against her.

Napoles was found guilty of extorting P10,000 from a landowner in barangay Quiot sometime in 2001.

In an eight-page decision, Gutierrez upheld an earlier decision by Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas Primo Miro who ordered Napoles dismissed and subsequently denied his motion for reconsideration.

Napoles was to have assessed the correct zonal valuation of a 525-square-meter lot owned by Antonio Ruiz but offered to lower the amount of the capital gains tax due on the property in exchange for P10,000 to speed up processing and final approval by the BIR regional office.

This prompted Ruiz to seek the help of the NBI which then sent agents who caught Napoles in the act of receiving a white envelope with marked money inside at a fast food outlet on General Maxilom Avenue.

A similarly high-profile arrest on similar charges involving another BIR officers occurred in 1999 when BIR examiner Benjamin Gamorot was entrapped by members of the now-defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force inside a university campus. He too was dismissed from service.

In March this year, NBI agents also arrested revenue officer Omar Mamongcara while in the act of receiving P10,000 from Elenita Maranga allegedly in exchange for the speedy facilitation of documents pertaining to an P800,000 property sale.