The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has temporarily relieved, pending an investigation, an employee allegedly caught by a Bureau of Customs (BOC) CCTV camera taking a bribe.
In a press conference on September 8, PPA acting general manager Atty. Jay Daniel Santiago said the ports authority is conducting an investigation on the claim of Customs commissioner Nicanor Faeldon, based on a CCTV footage, that a PPA employee received “money from importers/brokers transacting and processing papers to avail (of) gate passes.”
BOC, in a statement on September 7, initially said the employee was from Asian Terminals Inc. The BOC statement was later revised to say it was a PPA staff caught on camera.
Santiago said the employee was immediately relieved and asked to prepare a sworn statement.
The employee has denied allegations of corruption, the PPA chief said. “What she is denying is the insinuation that whatever happened in the video (led) to something illegal.”
The PPA employee in question is a collecting officer who has been with PPA for more than 20 years and, based on initial investigation, has had no prior record of any wrongdoing, Santiago said.
BOC’s Faeldon insinuated that the BOC CCTV camera on September 5 caught one personnel in Room 104, located within the BOC-Port of Manila building, of taking a bribe. According to a September 7 BOC statement, “The video clip shows the said employee was trying to conceal her actions from the camera mounted above her, signifying her knowledge of the existence of the camera. No receipt was also provided.”
Santiago said Room 104 houses a PPA operation that reviews entries of shipments that require payment of wharfage dues and port fees.
He said the employee explained she was “accepting money as part of her function as a collecting officer for PPA. According to her that is part of the regular process that they follow and also that the funds which she receives in return are always receipted.”
The PPA chief said, “We will see the veracity or truthfulness of her allegation based on her sworn statement” as well as supporting documents.
He, however, noted that “based on procedure,” the employee should not have been receiving cash. “Officially, money should really be received by PPA cashiers, which is right at the next window but according to them (PPA staff), as a matter of practice… what they (port users) normally do (to process documents), because they have to go from one port area to another… is sometimes… leave the documents and leave the payments then they just come back for the approved documents and the receipts for the payments,” he explained.
“Not only are we going to check whether there was an anomaly, but we are also going to check whether or not in that particular office they were actually following procedure.”
If proved to have committed a corrupt act, the employee in question may be sanctioned with a reprimand, suspension or termination, Santiago said. The filing of a criminal action is also possible.
Asked to comment on BOC’s showing the video first to media before launching any formal investigation, Santiago would only say, “we leave that to the discretion of commissioner Faeldon.”
In a September 8 statement, PPA said it is accelerating efforts to migrate from manual to cashless transactions to avoid similar cases like this in the future.
“PPA is also assuring the public that the agency will not tolerate any kind of corruption under its auspices and similarly punish to the full extent of the law its personnel that will be found guilty of any corruption,” PPA stated. – Roumina Pablo
