{"id":113766,"date":"2017-08-24T03:39:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T07:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=113766"},"modified":"2017-08-24T05:04:27","modified_gmt":"2017-08-24T09:04:27","slug":"drilon-wants-faeldon-placed-under-witness-protection-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/08\/24\/drilon-wants-faeldon-placed-under-witness-protection-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Drilon wants Faeldon placed under witness protection program"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE<\/a>
FILE PHOTO\/ Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon (PNA photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2014 Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Thursday urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to consider placing former Bureau of Customs (BOC) Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon under its witness protection program (WPP) to expose what he knew of this massive corruption within the bureau.<\/p>\n

Drilon made this call after colleague Senator Panfilo Lacson, in a privilege speech, revealed a list of names of bribe givers or players, collectors or bagmen, recipients of bribes in BOC as well as the breakdown of amounts given.<\/p>\n

Lacson said Faeldon was among the first to receive a bribe worth PHP100 million, a quarter of which, or PHP 25 million was retained as finder’s fee by his middleman named Joel Teves.<\/p>\n

Drilon stressed that the DOJ should consider the revelations made by Lacson and start its own investigation into the matter.<\/p>\n

He also said that now was the time for Faeldon to \u201cspeak up.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Should Faeldon decide to cooperate by revealing what he knew of this massive corruption in the customs, it is proper that he be placed under the WPP,” Drilon said in a press statement.<\/p>\n

“The people behind this massive corruption in the customs have already been exposed. Commissioner Faeldon is the most qualified person to corroborate these claims of corruption under his watch,” he added.<\/p>\n

Drilon said he was shocked upon hearing Lacson\u2019s revelation but said: “it should give the Congress more resolve to address the top-down corruption in the agency.”<\/p>\n

“It’s a shocking, disheartening revelation, but it behooves Congress to act swiftly to solve this issue of corruption in the bureau once and for all,” the senator said.<\/p>\n

Drilon also called on the DOJ to review the testimonies made at the Senate Blue Ribbon’s investigation into the PHP 6.4-billion shabu shipment from China.<\/p>\n

Brazen corruption<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Lacson said that if the Duterte administration remains committed to its war on drugs, it should also consider waging a \u201cwar on corruption\u201d and it should start at BOC.<\/p>\n

Lacson made this call expressing his frustration on how the BOC has apparently failed to show improvement in fighting corruption within its officials and employees — whom he described as \u201cdevils\u201d within the bureau.<\/p>\n

\u201cHell is empty and all the devils are at the Bureau of Customs,\u201d Lacson said in his privilege speech, paraphrasing a quote by William Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

He slammed Faeldon for his excuse that he was \u201chelplessly alone\u201d in eradicating corruption in his domain noting that if he should have stood firm even if he was alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs head of the Bureau\u2026Commissioner Faeldon should have started the cleansing in the Bureau by eliminating what has been corrupting the agency for so long, the \u2018Tara\u2019 (payoffs) system,\u201d Lacson said.<\/p>\n

However, Lacson also expressed hope that newly-appointed Customs chief Isidro Lape\u00f1a would not be \u201ceaten by the system\u201d as his predecessor, Faeldon.<\/p>\n

The senator said that it was up to Lape\u00f1a to \u201cdestroy the brazen corruption\u201d within the BOC by institutionalizing genuine reforms that would mean the abolition of the corruption system from top officials down to the last rank-and-file.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problems that our country is facing now, such as smuggling, fraud, and drug trafficking can effectively be lessened if we only fortify our first line of defense on border management. Thus, it is incumbent upon us to address this BOC issue head on and at its core,\u201d Lacson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we intend to remain committed to the War on Drugs, we need a War on Corruption,\u201d he added. (PNA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2014 Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Thursday urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to consider placing former Bureau …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":104122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[4772,21232],"class_list":["post-113766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-drilon","tag-faeldon","mauthors-azer-parrocha","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}