Duterte admits he considered replacing Customs chief Guerrero

August 25, 2020

President Rodrigo Duterte has admitted that he nearly fired Bureau of Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero for maintaining a former alleged corrupt staff.

Duterte, in a taped televised message on Monday night and aired on Tuesday morning, said that he told Guerrero to remove his former chief of staff Teodoro Jumamil.

"I said fire Jumamil, he's playing for a long time...I think he was also suspended by Ombudsman. He's like a double whammy," he said.

Duterte called Jumamil "corrupt" for taking two jobs - one as board member of the state-run Development Bank of the Philippines and the other in Customs.

"Maybe because Jagger (Guerrero) was new at that time and he would need somebody to guide him to navigate through all of these hullabaloos in Congress," he said.

Duterte recalled that he told Guerrero that he would replace him if he would not dismiss Jumamil.

"I could not understand why he was holding DBP director at the same time he was an employee of the Customs. I told Jagger, 'Release him, if not, he will destroy you'. Thus, he was nearly destroyed," he said.

"'I was considering of replacing you (Guerrero) not because of anything. I can vouch that you are clean. Problem is, do not entertain loyalties especially in government. If you thin that that idiot is going to destroy you, you destroy him first'," he said of what he told to Guerrero, a retired military general.

Meanwhile, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, who was present when Duterte made a televised message in Davao City, noted that the BOC has now a "very sophisticated system" for monitoring all the shipments in the main ports in the country.

He said through this system, the BOC main office could monitor the value of the shipment as well as the taxes collected.

"If you use the information well, you can tell which is out of the ordinary and you can spot that," he said.

While the BOC system is not yet perfect, however, Dominguez said, "it's getting there."

BOC is an attached agency of the Department of Finance and the second biggest revenue generating office of the government, next to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Celerina Monte/DMS