Tsinoy caught with bogus commodity forms

MANILA, Philippines -  Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents arrested in an entrapment yesterday a Filipino-Chinese man who reportedly received a package containing 600 sets of fake commodity transaction forms used in the China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Free Trade Area.

In a statement, BOC Commissioner Angelito Alvarez said possession of those forms by private individuals is illegal since these are exclusively issued by concerned government agencies from the country of origin.

Smuggling syndicates reportedly make use the transaction to prevent the BOC from collecting the correct duties and taxes by entering false data.

The China-ASEAN Framework Agreement on Trade in Goods eliminates tariffs by 90 percent on the products being produced and sold in the expanded free trade area.

BOC official Filomeno Vicencio Jr. said a tipster told them that the blank transaction forms arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) last March 15 on a plane from China.

Vicencio said the smugglers were paying as much as P5,000 for each set of the China-AFTA transaction form.

Alvarez said that last year, some 54,000 import entries cleared Customs practically tariff-free on the strength of China-AFTA commodity transaction documents submitted by importers.

“If even just a small percentage of those entries cleared customs with the use of fake China-AFTA documents, government’s revenue loss would sum up to hundreds of millions of pesos,” he said.

Alvarez ordered Vicencio and his team to build up the case against the suppliers of fake China-AFTA forms based on available leads and coordinate more closely with the NBI and other law enforcement agencies to “ensure that this form of economic sabotage is nipped in the bud.”