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BUSINESSMAN filed on Thursday criminal charges with the
Office of the Ombudsman against former officials of the
Department of Finance One-Stop Shop Inter-Agency Tax
Credit and Duty Drawback Center and oil executives who
have allegedly defrauded the government of P288,364,405
in taxes from August 1994 to September 1996 through the
use of tax-credit certificates obtained through spurious
documents.
Felix
Chingkoe, stockholder of DKC Holdings Corp., filed
plunder, graft, estafa and falsification of public
documents against former finance undersecretary and
One-stop Shop administrator Antonio Belicena, former
One-stop Shop deputy executive director Uldarico Andutan
Jr. and Celso Legarda and Pacifico Cruz, executives of
Petron and Shell, respectively.
Felix
Chingkoe also included in his charges private
respondents, Faustino Chingkoe; his wife, Gloria, who
has already taken refuge in Canada being a citizen of
that country; Grace Chingkoe, Arsenio Costales, Emmanuel
Lao-An, Menchie Laceda, Maximiano Acilo, Catalina
Bautista, Rodel Rodriguez, Leonardo Tanseco, Crispulo
Pangilinan, Reynaldo Jose and Angel Chua.
Faustino, estranged brother of complainant Felix, and
his wife Gloria are among the incorporators of Filstar
Textile Industrial Corp., a garment company which
secured the tax-credit certificates (TCCs) through fake
papers and later transferred them to Shell and Petron
under the guise that these firms delivered petroleum
products to Filstar.
In his
complaint, Felix claimed that sometime in 1998, he
discovered that Faustino and his cohorts illegally
misused the different corporations under the DKC group
of companies, particularly Filstar, in defrauding the
government of taxes through dubious claims of tax
credits by falsely claiming that the company has
exported spun yarn through the so-called “textile
advance tax credits scheme.”
The
alleged scam happened in conspiracy with the officials
of the One-stop Shop.
Filstar,
which is among the companies owned or controlled by DKC,
has been registered with the Securities and Exchange
Commission as a company engaged in the import, export,
selling and manufacture, retail or wholesale, of yarns,
threads, laces, fabrics and other products.
Felix
claimed that in securing the TCCs, the company
misrepresented that it received cotton deliveries from
FLB International Corp. and Northern Cotton Corp.;
although FLB merely existed on paper, Northern ceased
its operations after its ginning plant was razed by a
fire on November 29, 1994.
“Since
Filstar never received any cotton from its purported
suppliers, it could not have produced, and in fact, did
not produce, the CVC and polyester products that the
corporation claims to have exported,” he said.
“The
fact that Filstar never manufactured the products that
it purportedly exported, the shipping documents covering
these exports were similarly spurious and fabricated. As
a matter of fact, each and every shipping line allegedly
used certificates that they never issued the purported
bills of lading respectively attributed to them,” he
added.
The
complainant said Faustino and Gloria legalized their
operations by making it appear that DKC-owned
corporations delivered products including spun yarn,
threads, fiber and fabrics to selected member firms of
Filipino Hand Common Bonded Corp. owned by businesswoman
Luz Viado through her confidential assistant, Belen
Diamante, whom they befriended.
Felix
claimed that Faustino and Gloria made Diamante
understand that the fictitious transactions that she
would help them document for Filipino Hand companies,
such as Global Manufacturing Co., Square Gem
Manufacturing and Sunpiper Garments Manufacturing, would
be used as basis for their application of tax credits.
Diamante
allegedly signed memoranda of agreement, certificates of
delivery and receipt and Filstar’s sales invoice and
delivery receipts, forging the signatures of Angelito
Perez, general manager of Filipino Hand, Ulysses
Valencerina of Global and Romeo Tevez of Square Gem.
“After
completing the stimulation and forgeries, the Chingkoe
spouses proceeded to apply for tax credits on the basis
thereof and were able to avail TCCs amounting to
P50,225,773,” Felix said in his complaint.
As for
Belicena, the businessman said the former DOF
undersecretary “cannot simply ignore the scam occurring
under his watch,” noting that it is only Filstar that
sought and was granted tax credits equivalent to “three
times or three hundred-percent” more that what it sold.
In the
case of Andutan, he said the former official took undue
advantage of his position and against the government
when he recommended the approval of the company’s
spurious tax-credit claims.
Felix
said the TCCs were transferred or assigned to Shell and
Petron by way of deeds of assignment to the oil firms in
consideration of their alleged deliveries of oil
products to the firm.
However,
he said that Filstar, as a spinning mill, had no need
for oil because it was not operating a power plant and
does not even have machineries that require bunker oil.
“Moreover, the deeds of assignment executed by Filstar
in favor of Petron were conveyed for and in
consideration of credit notes which the latter issued in
favor of the former. In turn, Filstar’s credit balance
with Petron were ceded, transferred and conveyed by it
to Petrotrade Philippines Inc., Royale Fishing Corp. and
Duracom Mobile Power Corp. allegedly for valuable
monetary consideration. These latter-named companies
ultimately utilized and consumed oil obtained through
these credit balances,” the complainant said.
Felix
named other officials and staff of the One-stop Shop in
his charges: Asuncion Magdaet, Jane Aranas, Sylvialina
Daguimol, Merose Tordesillas, Anabelle Dino, Emelita
Tizon, Cherry Gomez, Charmelle Recoter, Gemma Ortiz and
Gregoria Cuento.
He said
as evaluators and reviewers, they did not inspect and
evaluate Filstar’s fictitious constructive exports as
mandated by the operations manual for textile advance
tax-credit scheme. |
