Lim tags Tsinoy businessman as No. 1 smuggler

A wealthy Filipino-Chinese trader whom ousted President Joseph Estrada once tagged as the man behind large-scale smuggling in the country apparently remains as the country’s top smuggler.

The name of Lucio Lao Co surfaced yesterday in the course of a three-hour hearing conducted by the Senate trade and commerce committee chaired by Sen. Manuel Roxas II on the unabated smuggling of consumer goods — from cars and tires to onions and garlic — into the country.

"Do you have the equivalent of an ‘order of battle’ when it comes to smuggling? Do you know who are the top smugglers?" opposition Sen. Alfredo Lim asked Customs Commissioner George Jereos and Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes, head of the defunct National Anti-Smuggling Task Force (Nastaf).

Jereos said his office has an old list of suspected smugglers whom he could name only if Roxas’ committee excluded the public from its hearing.

"Why would you do that? Why would you protect these people? If you don’t know, I will volunteer to you this information. The No. 1 smuggler in the country is Mr. Lucio Co," said Lim, who was once linked to a Paco, Manila-based rice smuggler.

Lim said Co has protectors in the Bureau of Customs and in high places in government.

Jereos said he knows one Lucio Co, but that he is the owner-operator of the Puregold chain of duty-free shops at the Clark and Subic special economic zones and retail stores in Metro Manila.

Roxas later told a news conference that he has heard about Co’s supposed illegal activities "in both informal and formal forums" but that no charges have been filed against him.

He said he has been getting such information since the time of Estrada.

Roxas served as trade secretary in both the Estrada and Arroyo administrations before he ran for senator in last May’s elections.

Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr., who chairs the Senate agriculture committee and a member of the Roxas panel, told the hearing that last January, when 15 container vans of chicken parts were spirited out of the Batangas City port, he received information that Co was the real owner of the contraband.

The documents covering the shipment, however, were in the name of a different person with an address in Novaliches, Quezon City. The authorities failed to trace the consignee.

Most of the vans, which also contained chocolates, were later recovered in Batangas, Metro Manila and Bulacan, Magsaysay said.

Responding to questions from Roxas, Finance Undersecretary Emmanuel Bonoan said his boss, Finance Secretary Juanita Amatong, who was a member of Reyes’ task force, once expressed concern over Co’s activities in a task force meeting.

He said Amatong’s fear was that duty-free goods in the trader’s Puregold shops in Clark and Subic were finding their way to his huge retail stores in Metro Manila without being subjected to the appropriate tax payments.

He added that as agreed upon in that particular meeting, the finance department, through the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Customs, is still gathering data on Co’s imports and sales in Subic and Clark, and in Metro Manila.

Roxas and other committee members and representatives of the business sector, agreed that the Reyes task force had done a creditable job. They decided to recommend that the task force be revived despite the government’s current austerity mode.

Among those who joined the recommendation was opposition Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, who once served as Customs commissioner during the Marcos era.

Enrile said as much as $14 billion worth of goods are smuggled annually into the country.

But Lim said any task force would fail if those in power lack the political will to stop smuggling.

"Let us charge and jail Mr. Co to set the example. The President has told the nation she is willing to become unpopular by doing the right thing. The right thing to do to demonstrate to the public that the government is serious in stopping smuggling is to jail the No. 1 smuggler," he said.

He said if Customs officials do know the smuggler and "are just chasing ghosts, then we are in deep trouble."

Also during the hearing, it was discovered that more than 50 container vans of onions were taken out of the Customs zone last August even if they were not covered by the proper import permit.

Magsaysay, who inspected the vans, reminded Deputy Commissioner Rey Allas that he had told him that he would hold the containers "because they were brought in illegally."

"What happened? Why was the illegal shipment released to the detriment of our onion farmers?" he asked. He heard no answers.