Manila court stops DBM, BOC from rescinding P650-M computer project

MANILA, Philippines - The Manila Regional Trial Court has issued a 20-day temporary restraining order stopping the Department of Budget and Management and the Bureau of Customs from rescinding a P650-million BOC contract for an integrated computerized system project.

The TRO was in response to the plunder and graft cases filed by Annabelle Margaroli, president of mobile IT solutions provider Omni Prime Marketing Inc., against Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina, former Customs commissioner Guillermo Parayno Jr. and former deputy commissioner Primo Aguas.

Margaroli cited a “criminal conflict of interest” against the three for arbitrarily voiding the contract which had been approved during the term of former Customs commissioner John Sevilla.

In her complaint, Margaroli said the project, called the Integrated Enhanced Customs Processing System, was cancelled by Lina barely two weeks after he assumed office.

The integrated system, along with a national single window – collectively dubbed as PNSW 2 – was seen to curb rampant smuggling in the country.

It establishes a central database system that tracks in real time all customs procedures nationwide. It also aims to be a fully electronic, paperless and human contact-free system of recording and monitoring customs transactions.

Lina said he nullified the contract because he wanted to review all projects of the BOC.

The contract eventually went to E-Konek Pilipinas, the existing service provider of the BOC where Lina and his family supposedly hold a 96.48 percent stake. 

Parayno, meanwhile, is the president of E-Konek and one of Lina’s business partners.

“After considering the foregoing arguments of the parties and pending hearing on the application for issuance of a writ of preliminary injunction, this court sees the grave and irreparable injury that may be caused upon petitioner, as well as the resulting undue delay in the delivery of the Philippines’ own committed international obligation (to establish the PNSW 2 Project) being a signatory to the ASEAN Single Window Agreement, if the acts of the individual respondents of canceling the procurement for the PNSW 2 Project are not restrained from being implemented, before the matter can be heard on notice,” Manila RTC Branch 47 presiding Judge Paulino Gallegos said in an order dated July 28.

The court order likewise stopped Lina and Jose Tomas Syquia, executive director  of the DBM procurement service, from “initiating and/or sourcing without authority of law other procurement for similar purpose than the PNSW 2 project, pending the hearing on the application for injunctive writ.”