{"id":149641,"date":"2018-01-29T22:12:02","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T03:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=149641"},"modified":"2018-01-29T22:12:02","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T03:12:02","slug":"faeldon-drags-drilon-sotto-into-boc-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/29\/faeldon-drags-drilon-sotto-into-boc-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"Faeldon drags Drilon, Sotto into BOC \u2018mess\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nicanor<\/a>
Nicanor Faeldon (Photo<\/a>: Senate of the Philippines\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA\u00a0— Senators Frank Drilon and Vicente Sotto III have made \u201cillegal\u201d requests at the Bureau of Customs (BOC), former BOC chief and now Office of Civil Defense deputy administrator Nicanor Faeldon claimed Monday.<\/p>\n

Faeldon made this remark after Senator Paolo Benigno Aquino IV asked him to name some persons who made illegal requests in the bureau he formerly headed during the third Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing into the PHP6.4-billion shabu shipment from China.<\/p>\n

The former BOC chief claimed that in 2016, Drilon pressured him into signing a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) to renovate a particular building into a museum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will start with Senator Drilon. As early as 2016, he has requested me to meet with him here at the Senate and asked me to sign a memorandum of agreement between BOC and the office of chairperson Maria Serena Diokno the chairperson of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines agreeing that the Customs house in Iloilo will be renovated using funds, I dunno if that was allocated by Sen. Dirlon, to the NHCP, and after the renovation it would be converted into a museum and the Bureau of Customs will occupy the third floor of that building,\u201d Faeldon said during the hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe insisted that I\u2019ll be signing that MOA. Twice I attended this meeting and said \u2018Sir, hindi po pwede\u2019, and on the third, I have forcibly changed the provisions of the MOA and signed it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Faeldon said that he felt it was not right for a senator such as Drilon to make such a request that he rejected his favor twice.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he also claimed that Sotto, in 2016, asked him to promote a BOC employee named Eric Alban as BOC director of intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs early as 2016, twice, he (Sotto) asked me to appoint one official of the BOC as the director of intelligence. Dalawang beses niya ako personal na kinausap<\/em>\u00a0(I spoke to him twice),\u201d Faeldon said.<\/p>\n

At first, Faeldon thought that he was a worthy candidate for promotion, but after he interviewed him and found out that he has been serving the intelligence of the bureau of the last 32 years but had not yet caught any employees involved in corruption, he found it hard to believe and \u201cnearly fell off his chair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are illegal. You insist on recommending the appointment of such officials,\u201d he added.
\nAquino, for his part, said he saw nothing wrong with recommending an employee for promotion or pushing for the completion of an unfinished project.<\/p>\n

Gordon echoed Aquino stressing that it was important to maintain heritage sites to preserve it for children who will see that there was once heritage in the Customs house.<\/p>\n

He also said that Sotto\u2019s request was \u201cnormal\u201d and he didn\u2019t insist on it anyway since the decision was still up to Faeldon.
\nNothing illegal<\/strong><\/p>\n

In an interview after the hearing, Drilon said that there was \u201cnothing illegal\u201d about the MOA to allow the NHCP to do repairs on the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing illegal. The MOA is to allow the NHCP to do repairs on the building. In fact, the building is not even owned by the Bureau of Customs. The title is in the name of the Republic of the Philippines. I don\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about,\u201d Drilon said.<\/p>\n

Drilon explained that the Customs building is a \u201chistorical building\u201d and housed a lot of other offices including a post-office and postal bank.<\/p>\n

Asked if he would make any recommendation to the Senate blue ribbon committee in relation to Faeldon\u2019s claims, Gordon said that he would rather wait for the committee recommendation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHayaan mo siya<\/em>\u00a0(Let him say what he wants),\u201d he said.
\nStick to the issue<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sotto, for his part, urged Faeldon to \u201cstick to the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAng issue paaano nakalabas yung<\/em>\u00a0PHP6.4 billion shabu. Dragging my name into whatever illegal concern,\u00a0na hindi naman<\/em>\u00a0illegal, will not remove his culpability (The issue is how the PHP 6.4 billion shabu was released. Dragging my name into whatever illegal concern which is not really even illegal will not remove his culpability),\u201d Sotto told reporters.<\/p>\n

He, however, admitted that he did request Faeldon to promote a certain Eric Alban but did not insist or pressure Faeldon into doing so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a request yes.\u00a0Sabi ko nga, ano ang<\/em>\u00a0(what\u2019s) illegal\u00a0sa<\/em>\u00a0(about the) request?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0— Senators Frank Drilon and Vicente Sotto III have made \u201cillegal\u201d requests at the Bureau of Customs (BOC), former BOC …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":149643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[4665,45109,21674,16640],"class_list":["post-149641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-bureau-of-customs","tag-frank-drilon","tag-nicanor-faeldon","tag-vicente-sotto-iii","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149641","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=149641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}