Smuggled firecracker shipment intercepted

Before I left Iloilo City last week, I learned about the confiscation by the Customs authorities of Iloilo of a 20-foot container of smuggled firecrackers. The van was seized from a ship of Sulpicio Lines.

The firecrackers were believed to have ori­ginated from China and assigned to a certain Bryan Co of Ledesma Street, Iloilo City. They were declared in the manifest as toys.

Customs Intelligence and Investigation Services director Jarina Paguntalan said initially BOC operatives had waited for Co to show up at the port and claim the container van.

Customs officials later traced Co to the address indicated in the shipment peers, but found there was no such person in the said address.

The shipment was valued at about P2-million. Paguntalan said his men are tracing where the shipment came from as well as the broker and the importer.

In short, that shipment is believed timed for the oncoming Christmas season. Well, until the BOC can find out who dunnit and who the actual consigned is, we can expect more attempts to bring in the firecrackers and pyrotechnics from outside the country.

Just hope they don’t blow up their ship carrier.

Former undersecretary Jocelyn (JocJoc) Bolante continues to remain in the public eye, especially in Negros Occidental, despite the emerging debate on whether he should be made to appear before the Senate to testify on the still unresolved P725 million fertilizer scam.

The issue refuses to die down. It was Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. of Makati and a Negrense who first exposed the scam on the floor of the House that triggered a rigid investigation by the Senate agriculture committee.

Rep. Cynthia Villar (Parañaque), according to Locsin, had told him that she was included in the list of recipients of the fertilizer dole out shortly before the last presidential polls.

However, according to Locsin, Rep. Villar complained to him that Bolante badmouthed her when she confronted him about it.

Another reason. Former Senate President Franklin Drilon told Negros mediamen that it was in a Bacolod hotel when he spotted Bolante with a heavy bag distributing money to several solons.

Drilon said he is willing to testify should the Senate reopen its probe into the fertilizer scam. But he withheld the names of the solons he saw receiving bundles of cash from Bolante, then Agriculture undersecretary.

Negros Occidental Gov. Isidro Zayco said he learned that he and the late Gov. Joseph Maranon had been listed as recipients of the largesse. But Zayco said he refused the offer. So did Maranon, according to his former chief of staff, lawyer Jose Maria Valencia. Maranon reportedly considered it too proximate to the polls and considered the amount offered too much to be accepted. Instead, Maranon reportedly returned the amount to the one who had offered it to him. So did Zayco.

But what stirred local interest was the claim by City Legal Officer Allan Zamora that he had already filed anti-graft charges against Rep. Monico Puentevella before the Ombudsman for the latter’s involvement in the scam as recalled in the Senate Investigation report.

The National Commission on Audit is reportedly conducting an ongoing investigation into the fertilizer scam.

Bolante’s case is still being debated by members of the Senate. Senator Edgardo Angara prefers to have it with the Ombudsman because the Senate agriculture committee had already submitted to the Ombudsman its findings.

The Ombudsman, however, has just started it preliminary investigation into the scandal, this precipitating the insistency by other senators, like Sen. Alan Cayetano, to reopen the investigation since the agriculture committee had pointed out that Bolante still has to answer a lot of questions from the Senate.

Well, that only means that the issue may not die down for sometime until the Ombudsman hands down its recommendation on whether to file charges against Bolante and his cohorts.