In a televised hearing of the House of Representatives on Monday, August 7, a Customs broker identified five (5) key Bureau of Customs (BoC) officials who are allegedly involved in accepting bribes or grease money.
Witness Mark Taguba dropped the following names of BoC officials:
- Teddy Raval, deputy commissioner of the BOC Intelligence Group
- Vicent Philip Maronilla, district collector of the BOC Manila International Container Port
- Niel Estrella of the BOC Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme (CISS)
- Milo Maestrecampo, director of the Import and Assessment Service and the Assessment and Operational Coordinating Group of the BOC
- Teodoro Sagaral, CIIS District Intelligence officer of the BOC
The officials present at the hearing each denied Taguba’s allegations of their involvement in corruption inside the bureau.
“I can probably be a rebel but I am not a thief,” Maestrecampo told media reports.
Maronilla, on the other hand, admits to meeting Taguba in the past, but also denied getting money from the broker.
Taguba was placed under the protective custody of the Senate, as both houses of Congress investigate the P6.4 billion-worth shabu shipment from China that was able to make it past the BoC.
