Senator Cynthia Villar expressed disappointment over the snail-paced filing of charges against alleged smugglers as she welcomed the passage on third reading of the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act at the Senate.
“It is unfortunate that the numerous statements we gathered from resource persons in our hearings pointing to these persons as the ones responsible for smuggling were not enough for the filing of formal charges,” Villar said.
After two years, the Department of Justice has not filed formal charges against alleged big-time rice smugglers, who were involved in rice and garlic cartels. Two of the suspects were the focus of the Senate probe into smuggling in 2013.
Villar, chair of the Committee on Agriculture and Food, is the principal sponsor of Senate Bill No. 2923 or the Anti-Large Scale Agricultural Smuggling Act. The bill, passed on third reading by the Senate, seeks to declare agricultural smuggling as a no-bailable offense of economic sabotage.
“We are confident that once enacted into law, this will send a strong message that this government is serious in eradicating smuggling in our country, and that economic saboteurs will be severely punished for threatening our country’s food security,” she said.
Under the Villar bill, the amount of smuggled agricultural product subject to economic sabotage is equal to or more than P10 million for rice, and equal to or more than P1 million for other agricultural products such as sugar, corn, pork, poultry, garlic, onion, carrots, dried fish, and cruciferous vegetables.
The senator said smuggling is more serious than the pork barrel scam with about 600,000 metric tons of rice smuggled each year and about P200 billion to P450 billion lost to agricultural smuggling alone.
Villar also noted “smugglers have become creative and cunning in their schemes aside from being aggressive.
“Thus, we ensured that all the elements in the determination of the crime of agricultural smuggling as economic sabotage”•whether by means of technical or outright smuggling”•are covered on the bill. We were also elaborate in liability of persons to the crime of agricultural smuggling as economic sabotage”•whether as principals or accomplices,” she said.