By Genalyn D. Kabiling
Smuggled goods will be destroyed instead of placing them on auction based on a new directive from President Duterte.
The President said he wanted to end the “insanity” behind the auction of smuggled goods, which, he claimed, has been abused by the smugglers in cahoots with some Customs agents.
“From now on, there will be no auction on smuggled goods. It will be destroyed once the period of redeeming it and I will take note of those people who are there,” the President said during the oath-taking of new government appointees in Malacañang last Tuesday.
The President lamented that some Customs personnel were conniving with smugglers who use fictitious consignee names to obtain the confiscated goods during the auction.
“The consignee is fictitious. Then the corrupt office there in the Customs, the auction section and after a while, while they are being parked inside the warehouses, if the time comes for government to make the accounting, they would conduct the auction and sell it to the people who really, in the first place, were responsible of importing them,” Duterte said. “This insanity has to stop,” he added.
The President issued the directive a few days after the destruction of smuggled luxury cars in Manila, Cebu, and Davao.
Duterte said he preferred the smuggled vehicles to be destroyed than put up for auction to curb smuggling activities.
He claimed that car smugglers have taken advantage of the auction to get the cars at cheaper prices and with legal documents.
