FORMER executives of Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. (PSPC) filed recently a criminal complaint against former Customs Commissioner Napoleon Morales and two more for falsely accusing them of being involved in illegal importation.
Edgar Chua, former Shell country manager; Nigel Avila, former Shell country tax manager; and Shell former Vice President for Corporate Communications Roberto Kanapi, filed before the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office their complaint on January 4.
Aside from Morales, former Port of Batangas Collector Juan Tan and Batangas-based media person Lourdes Aclan were named respondents in the complaint. They, according to the complaint, “wilfully made blatant false statements” in accusing the former Shell executives of illegal importation and violation of Republic Act 3019 (the Graft and Corrupt Practices Act) in a complaint filed with the Ombudsman last September 14, 2016. They could be charged with four counts of perjury, a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment.
Morales, Tan and Aclan named the former PSPC executives in relation to Shell’s nonpayment of taxes supposedly due from the company’s past importations of catalytic cracked gasoline and light catalytic cracked gasoline (CCG/LCCG) and alkylate. They also named former President Benigno S. Aquino III and former Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima for allowing the company to do so.
The former Shell executives, however, said the respondents did not submit any proof to support their allegations, which they describe as “all perjuries, outright lies and patently untrue.” For instance, in claiming Aquino and Purisima abetted the nonpayment of taxes, said government officials could not have taken any action on this case, as said case was filed at the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) in February 2010, or four months before the election and assumption of office by Aquino and Purisima.
In the affidavit of the former Shell executives, they said Shell dutifully complied with the prevailing rules and regulations, promulgated by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) from 2003 to 2009, which Morales and Tan themselves implemented, being tax-collecting agents of the BIR. They claimed Morales and Tan made their own interpretation of the rules in insisting that double excise taxes be imposed on PSPC’s importations of CCG and LCCG and retroactively at that.
The former Shell officials cited the convenient omission by the respondents in not telling the Ombudsman about the subsequent collection efforts that respondent Tan himself pursued against PSPC. This dragged the issue to the CTA and, eventually, the Supreme Court.