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UNDER
grilling by a veteran legislator, the executive director
of the Department of Finance’s (DOF) One-Stop Shop (OSS)
Tax Credit and Duty Drawback Center said Tuesday
sensitive database on the operations of companies
seeking tax credits, which he had submitted to the
congressman, could not be used to jeopardize operations
of these firms.
This,
even though Finance Secretary Margarito Teves had
confirmed Monday the serious misgivings aired by
business groups—citing past experience of harassment by
unidentified parties—over the submission to a
congressional public hearing of the DOF’s sensitive
database on operations of companies seeking to avail
themselves of tax-credit certificates (TCCs) issued by
the government as incentives.
Teves
had told Senate reporters in an ambush interview that
submitting the documents to become part of the public
record of the House inquiry on TCCs could be
“problematic” as they contain sensitive and confidential
data involving private companies that applied for the
tax credits.
At
Tuesday’s hearing of the House ways and means committee,
Ernesto Hiansen, OSS’s executive director, confirmed
that he had submitted to Deputy Speaker Arnulfo
Fuentebella’s staff the electronic copy of the 457-page
database of companies that were issued TCCs. He said he
will give a separate copy to the committee. Sources had
said Hiansen was himself reluctant to give the database,
but Fuentebella’s staff—not the committee staff—had
prevailed and gotten the data base just the same late
Monday.
Circumstances of the retrieval of the data by parties
sent by Fuentebella were unclear.
Teves
had earlier given the go-ahead, on pressure from
Congress, to releasing the database. But during a Senate
hearing Monday morning, he said it was a “problematic”
situation and that he would likely recommend that the
House probers only be allowed to “view” the files” but
to “return” them.
Besides
the database, Fuentebella admitted to the ways and means
panel of Rep. Exequiel Javier that his office also got
from the DOF-OSS the list of personnel with pending
cases numbering about 20, list of companies endorsed to
the Ombudsman for preliminary investigation, as well as
cases filed before the Sandiganbayan. Submission of
these lists was never in question; only the companies’
data base, with several business chambers, local and
foreign, airing their concern in separate letters to
President Arroyo and Secretary Teves.
Fuentebella asked Hiansen to help the committee analyze
the documents even as he said that he will ask committee
chairman Javier to do this in an executive session.
But
PDP-Laban Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. of Makati City said
that as far as he knows, executive sessions could only
be conducted on concerns of national security.
Saying
he wanted to clear his name on account of the
BusinessMirror’s exclusive stories describing the
open-ended House probe as a “fishing expedition,”
Fuentebella took pains to make Hiansen explain that
submission of the database to parties outside the DOF
would not hurt the operations of business.
“Sir, we
are going to the system, and from my understanding, the
list that is going to be provided was supposed to guide
the committee in its work,” Hiansen said.
Fuentebella, in his follow-up question, said: “So, that
being the case, since you are admitting that we are just
on the system, then there is no harm for the committee
to even review and evaluate the database that you gave
us, which I think is very good—would you agree to that?”
Hiansen
answered yes.
One
letter of concern over the submission of the database,
this one addressed to Teves, lamented that “in the past,
data on TCC issuances to particular companies which were
illegally obtained from the OSS Center were used by
criminal syndicates to harangue legitimate businessmen
and companies. This was achieved by smearing their
reputation and linking them to the TCC scam at DOF.”
Fuentebella resented the phrase “fishing expedition”
when he filed House Resolution 442 directing the ways
and means panel to conduct an inquiry “in aid of
legislation” on the “reported irregularities” on the
issuances of TCCs by the DOF-OSS.
“This
representation would want to make it very clear that I
don’t want to employ dirty tricks in this committee or
in any other committees, for that matter. I have been a
congressman for more than 20 years, and never in my
career as a legislator did I ever attempt to do
[anything] of this nature,” said Fuentebella in his
preliminary statement.
He said
that he filed the resolution to address the present
problems of the administration, but has so far not given
any specifics of any fresh anomalies that may warrant an
inquiry.
Locsin
said that since it refers to a tax credit, there is
nothing wrong with “fishing expedition.” “I don’t think
there is anything wrong with the fishing expedition
because this refers to a tax credit; it’s a privilege,
it is a loss to the government, and if we need to fish,
we should, because these are tax exemptions, right? And
the tax exemption is a particular prerogative of the
House. There is mention in the article of exposing the
executive to a suit—why, is there anywhere in any law
that says that data regarding a privilege to exempt
entities from taxes or to allow them to deduct from
their tax liabilities [is something] we cannot know
anything about, and that we cannot fish? Is there any
law?” Locsin asked.
At one
point, Javier cautioned Fuentebella against being “too
personal” in his grilling of Hiansen. “We are here to
solve the problem. I think we should focus on the
performance now of the one-stop-shop center,” Javier
told Fuentebella. |
