Customs verifying US senator’s gun trafficking case

MANILA, Philippines - The Bureau of Customs (BOC) is reviewing procedures on the export of goods following the arrest of a California state senator on charges of smuggling high-powered arms to the US from the Philippines.

Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla said they are taking the step, although the BOC could not yet confirm reports that the smuggled firearms were shipped from the port of Cagayan de Oro City.

“There had been no declared findings that there were guns that reportedly came out from Mindanao,” he said.

“We checked with our port collectors in Cagayan de Oro as well as other ports, but there has been no declared exported firearms.”

Sevilla said the BOC has been giving more attention to goods being imported than those being sent to other countries.

“We have realized that it is now time for us to study the procedures to make sure that these kinds of goods would not be exported,” he said.

“We are having our existing procedures checked, regardless of what port, so that we would be sure that there would be no contraband coming from the Philippines.”

However, Sevilla could not yet mention any initial steps   undertaken to change the procedure in processing export  documents.

“Here at the Bureau of Customs, we have to see the entire picture because we might be tightening our security on one end but loose at the other side so these contraband goods might still slip past us.”

California state Sen. Leland Yee was arrested last March 27 in a series of raids in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento on charges of arms trafficking and campaign fraud.

Unconfirmed reports said some members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines were routinely selling weapons to rebels and other armed groups.

In an affidavit, FBI agent Emmanuel Pascua talked of how Yee allegedly explained the entire process of acquiring weapons from a Philippine military captain and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and bringing them to the US.