We keep on hearing about ‘Lucio Co’ – but nothing happens - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

Who’s this "mystery man" named Lucio Co? Even former Customs Commissioner Nelson Tan identified a "Lucio Co" as one of the top smugglers. Well, Tan is long gone – but they’re still talking about the elusive "Lucio Co."

I’ve seen a fellow named Lucio Co roving around in the company of Presidential cronies, and he’s been spotted in and out of Malacañang Palace. Is this an "innocent" Lucio Co, but does this Co have a namesake who’s guilty as hell of bringing in container-loads of contraband and untaxed by the hundreds of sea-vans and containers? This Lucio Co must be immortal and ubiquitous. We heard of him during the Ramos administration as being buddy-buddy with FVR’s most famous general outside of General Tabako himself. Yet, when "Erap" Estrada assumed the Presidency, lo and behold! There was still a Lucio Co very much in evidence. Did this guy import stuff "duty free" or did he sneak them in by the gross ton, free of payment of any duties and tariffs, which is not the same thing.

And now comes our movie-hero cop, General Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, sighing that he dreams of one day being lucky enough to confiscate a shipment of smuggled goods and link them, through actual "evidence", to Lucio Co. Susmariosep, Ping. Stop dreaming, please, and start doing. Who is Co? The Phantom Without the Opera?

The now-scrapped Nelson Tan "report" to the Palace in August 1999, even mentioned, aside from Lucio Co, another guy named Lucio Ko. Nobody in the unfortunate Tan’s list has been sent to jail. A couple of them were briefly "arrested" and detained for interrogation, but, when nobody was looking, they skipped from behind bars. The suspected smugglers got off scot-free, while Nelson Tan was given the boot.

Where is Nelson now? Back in Zamboanga, the hometown of Lepeng Wee? Oops. That Lepeng is a seaweed exporter. And a former "negotiator" with the Abu Sayyaf. What other import-export stuff does he handle?

PNP chief Director General Lacson says that President Estrada has specifically instructed him to go after smugglers, including the President’s relatives and children. Seeing is believing, Ping. So far, I ain’t seen nothing.

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Following the allegations of former Finance Secretary Ed Espiritu that the Philippine National Bank (PNB) extended a P600-million loan to Dante Tan’s BW Resources, which Espiritu described as a "behest loan", I’m reminded of the President’s boast that he will go after delinquent borrowers from government lending institutions who have welshed on their multimillion-peso loans. If I recall, those remarks, made during a sortie to Laguna some weeks ago, blamed delinquent big borrowers with past-due loans as responsible for our present economic woes. (Aren’t Erap & Co – the "Co" meaning "company" – somewhat responsible, too?)

Of course, who can disagree with the Chief Executive that those delinquent bigtime borrowers should have the book thrown at them, and their overdue repayments (some of them dating back almost a quarter of a century) collected. Indeed, Espiritu had declared that the P600-million loan given BW Resources (when former Chief Justice and Presidential defense counsel Andres Narvasa was PNB Chairman?) did not comply with the three "Cs" of sound banking practice – capacity to pay, collateral, and character.

We ought to inquire now whether, in speeding up such a loan, any Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas rules, regulations, and policies were either circumvented or violated? If there were violations, then, shouldn’t those who approved the loan, from bank chairman to president and members of the PNB Board of Directors, be held legally responsible? This is a matter which should concern BSP Governor Rafael Buenaventura.

A former executive of a prominent bank which is no longer in business confided to his intimates that, from his own experience, he knew how some of the PNB’s ranking officials operated at that time. When the principal of his bank, now kaput, asked for the restructuring of a multimillion-peso loan owed the PNB, a member of the top hierarchy there whispered to him that if he forked over – well, you know what – everything could be arranged. Alas, the distressed bank’s principal could not comply with this "requirement." Adios, muchachos for him! What kind of "requirement", the curious might ask, did the BW’s Dante Tan have to satisfy to get that P600 million?

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Kudos to Immigration Commissioner Rufus Rodriguez and his Immigration sleuths for their having nabbed an Australian long-wanted for his audacious illegal recruitment, counterfeit passport-making, and estafa! What intrigues me is how this Aussie buccaneer was able to evade the law – in both the Philippines and his home country, Australia – for so long. When the larrikin John Patrick Gillespie was accosted last Saturday at the NAIA, he was in the act of boarding a Qantas flight to Australia where (surprise, surprise), he, too, is wanted for game-fixing in horseracing.

The daring Gillespie had been on the "most wanted list" of the Bureau of Immigration since November 1998 when he was pinpointed as the "president, governor-general," and concurrently "foreign affairs minister" of a fictitious country in the South Pacific which he and his cohorts called "Melchizedek." At that time, three of his fellow racketeers were arrested (Nov. 11, 1998) in Olongapo City – one a British lawyer named Stuart Ronald Mason-Parker, (the alleged "justice minister") an Australian named Dennis Oakley (styling himself "minister of the navy and coast guard") and a Malaysian-Chinese named Chen Chin Yee, along with three Bangladeshis who worked in their "staff."

Despite having been caught en flagrante selling "Melchizedek" passports and "recruiting", for substantial fees, workers from China and Bangladesh (the processing fee was US$3,500 per sucker), the three foreigners – thanks to pressure exerted, through their Embassies, by their own governments – were able to get themselves "deported" home. Gee whiz. No wonder, aside from the Impeachment embarrassment, we’re sneered at by other countries and mocked by their governments and media. We’ve made ourselves doormats for the trampling of foreigners, particularly those of the gweilo or White Devil variety.

Fortunately, BI Commissioner Rodriguez is an accomplished international lawyer himself and not easily bullied. A former Dean of the San Sebastian College of Law, Manila (the youngest Dean, at age 37, when he was appointed in 1990), a former Vice Governor of Misamis Oriental (1984-1986), Rodriguez has a Masters of Laws from the Columbia University, New York (May 1995), and was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He also received a Certificate of Achievement with honors from the Parker Program on International and Foreign Law.
He was 7th in his graduating class when he obtained an Ll.B from the University of the Philippines College of Law, April 1980, and placed 17th in the 1981 Bar examinations. He also received an A.B.-Economics in 1975, summa cum laude, from the De La Salle University as a Jose Rizal Honors Awardee. Rufus, further, has an M.A. in Economics (1984) from Xavier University, in Cagayan de Oro.

Well, he’s just acquired another, more practical title: That of "gangbuster." I hope, though, that slippery John Gillespie stays "busted."

A friend once wondered aloud why, when he visited Australia for the first time, he was pleasantly surprised to discover the Aussies so warm, friendly, and "civilized" in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. (He never got to Perth, which seems to be nearer Singapore than Sydney). I replied that the inhabitants of the Land of Oz were so "nice" in their home country, because all the Australian rascals had come to the Philippines, where they were running beer and prostitution joints, underground gambling rackets, the "mail-order" and "catalogue bride" rackets and other fascinating occupations. Of course, there are good Aussies here, too, so I trust they don’t get offended. Not everyone is a wild Ocker or a "bushranger", just as not every Pinoy has seven mistresses or is a bank swindler.

Generalizations are abhorrent and to be avoided, but here’s one: when it comes to dealing with foreigners, Filipinos are the race to whom P.T. Barnum must have referred, when he cracked: "There’s one born every minute."

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ERRATUM: Former Negros Oriental Rep. Mike Romero was incorrectly identified the other day as coming from Misamis Oriental. Mea culpa, not the proofreader’s.