Firm accuses Alberto Lina of plunder over nixed deal

Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina. INQUIRER PHOTO/RICHARD A. REYES

Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina and two other Bureau of Customs officials are facing plunder and graft complaints in the Office of the Ombudsman for rescinding a P650-million contract for a computerized processing system in the BOC in favor of a private firm owned by Lina.

Citing a “criminal conflict of interest,” Annabelle Margaroli, president of Omniprime Marketing Inc., on Thursday brought criminal charges against Lina, former Customs Commissioner Guillermo Parayno Jr. and former Deputy Commissioner Primo Aguas for their alleged roles in voiding the project which the BOC had awarded to Omniprime and its partner, Intrasoft International Inc., on April 13.

Margaroli was accompanied by lawyer Harry Roque. She said Lina’s arbitrariness in voiding the contract would only benefit E-Konek Pilipinas, one of the six companies owned by the customs chief that directly transact business with the BOC.

She said her firm’s new integrated customs processing system—which was intended to create a “national single window”—was supposed to replace the current “antiquated” system called the automated system for customs data, or AsyCUDA, that E-Konek and its partner, computer systems developer Webb Fontaine, had been using.

She said Lina owned 96.48 percent of E-Konek which, she claimed, had been earning up to P500 million annually as a service provider for the BOC’s existing computer system since 2007.

“The new integrated system is a modern and faster mode of processing transactions in the BOC. It will also help curb corruption,” Margaroli told reporters after she filed her 30-page complaint.

“In a matter of few seconds, you can finish a transaction which could take hours to finish with the AsyCUDA system of E-Konek. It would also integrate BOC transactions and lessen human intervention,” she added.

She urged Lina to review Omniprime’s proposal which, she said, had been approved after passing a rigorous seven-month bidding process during the term of his predecessor, John Philip Sevilla.

In her complaint-affidavit, Margaroli said Lina ordered the project canceled on May 6, barely two weeks after he replaced Sevilla.

“The cancellation by Lina was a grave instance of a criminal conflict of interest, manifest illegal partiality and malevolent bad faith because it benefited E-Konek Pilipinas,” Margaroli said in her complaint.

“The continuation of the project and its award in favor of [Omniprime] would have meant that the huge earnings E-Konek Pilipinas has been raking in since 2007 as a value-added system provider… would dry up,” she said.

Margaroli said that Parayno, as president of E-Konek, was an “inevitable beneficiary of the criminal acts of respondents Lina and Aguas, and an indispensable party/conspirator.”

E-Konek’s loss was not the reason for the cancellation of the P650-million computerized customs processing system contract won by Omniprime, Lina had said earlier.

In a statement, Lina explained “after determining that market conditions have changed and that there may be other customs data systems that are more efficient, cost-effective and advantageous to the government, I decided to seek the abandonment of the current project.”

“We understand that there are existing systems that can fulfill the needs of the bureau, which are potentially at least 50 percent cheaper than this amount,” he said.

Although he did not categorically confirm claims that he owns a majority stake at E-Konek, Lina said that the company would no longer take part in the project.

“To stamp out any lingering doubts that this is the case, E-Konek will not participate in any further bid for this project, given my public commitment that there will be no conflict of interest during my stint at the Bureau of Customs,” he added.

Reports said E-Konek is run by Parayno, a former Customs commissioner and one of Lina’s business partners. Jerry E. Esplanada