New conflict-of-interest case filed vs BOC’s Lina

By Luis Leoncio

Another multimillion-peso conflict-of-interest case has surfaced against Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina. The case, which involves the cancellation of a vital contract, could reportedly delay the Philippines’s integration into the single Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) market.

Prominent lawyer Harry Roque, representing Omniprime Marketing Inc. and Intrasoft International, accused Lina of bumping off a competitor of E-Konek, a Lina company, just two weeks after he was appointed commissioner of the Bureau of Customs (BOC), the position vacated by John Sevilla last April.

Lina, according to Roque, canceled a P650-million contract that was successfully bid out to set up a modern integrated customs-processing system in the Philippines.

“Curiously, E-Konek, one of the five losing bidders in the project, is a company where Lina has a 96.48-percent stake,” Roque said. “Moreover, the corporation behind the current antiquated systems used by the BOC—Webb Fontaine—has beneficial business relations with E-Konek.”

The E-Konek contract was among the subjects of graft charges filed in 2011 against Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, then-Finance Undersecretary Guillermo Parayno Jr. and then-Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez with the Office of the Ombudsman.

In the complaint, Customs workers said the three officials “virtually” allowed the illegal operations of E-Konek—a provider of electronic lodgment of import and export entries for the bureau—“without any legal contract with the bureau and no public bidding.” It operated in 1994.

“E-Konek rakes in hundreds of millions in revenues annually through its illegal operations in BOC offices nationwide. To date, E-Konek maintains 26 big clients that questionably and directly transact daily in BOC,” the complaint said.

E-Konek is owned by Lina, with Parayno as president, while Alvarez is a top official of Air21, another company owned by Lina.

Last April 13, the joint-venture rival of E-Konek won a seven-month long public bid held by the bureau.

Ten days later, on April 23, the contract was finalized and it was scheduled to be signed by the end of the same month.

But on April 24, Lina suddenly replaced Sevilla. It took Lina only two weeks to cancel the contract that had undergone two biddings in nearly a decade.

The cancellation, Roque said, “reeks of the foul smell of a clear conflict of interest.”

Webb Fontaine itself also lost out to Roque’s client in the public bid for the national integrated enhanced customs processing system.

E-Konek is now being run by Lina’s business partner, former Customs Commissioner Parayno.

Lina claimed to have divested his interest in the company. The integrated system introduced by the E-Konek rival, along with a national single window, is seen as the long-sought after solution to rampant smuggling in the Philippines.

It establishes a central database system that tracks in real time all customs procedures nationwide. It aims to be a fully electronic, paperless and human contact-free system of recording and monitoring customs transactions.

Meanwhile, the national single window consolidates relevant services from all government agencies involved in customs procedures using international standards.

Members of Asean have agreed on a common window system to fast-track cargo clearance as they move toward regional integration.

The system complied with international open-communication standards while ensuring that each of the member-countries can exchange data securely and reliably with any trading partners that use international open standards, Roque said.

Its hallmarks are a simpler and faster processing time, and a more transparent way of doing business, he added.

Said to be already 10 years in the making, the national single window is a key component of the country’s goal to join a single Asean market by the end of this year, as the Philippines has volunteered to do a pilot for the integration project.

Lina’s decision to cancel the contract for the two consolidated projects would delay the country’s integration into the single Asean market, according to Roque.