The Bureau of Customs filed a P5 billion smuggling case today against Phoenix Petroleum Philippines, Inc., one of the leading independent oil industry players in the country which in 2009 was ranked 211th among the countries top 10,000 corporations.

Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez has ordered the agency’s Legal Service to determine if there is legal basis to require that transshipment cargoes eventually to be entered under consumption entries are processed, assessed and paid for at their port of discharge.

The Bureau of Customs raided today a warehouse in Binondo, Manila suspected of being used as storage of smuggled goods and allegedly being maintained by persons supplying counterfeit goods to stall owners at the 168, 999 and 1159 Malls.

The Bureau of Customs seized today assorted contraband consisting of top of the line bicycles, branded sports shoes and used clothing with a combined value of P20 million on orders of Custom Commissioner Angelito Alvarez.

The Bureau of Customs filed smuggling charges today against an officer of an oil importing company whose modus operandi was detected based on information provided by one of the agency’s accredited international bulk and break-bulk cargo surveyors.

A lady importer who allowed her company to be used as a front by smugglers for a fee was the subject of a smuggling complaint filed by the Bureau of Customs today before the Department of Justice.

The Bureau of Customs has lowered the boom on the rapists of the ocean.

In a complaint filed today with the Department of Justice, Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez charged the owner, consignee, shippers and haulers of the P35 million worth of black corals and other endangered marine species which the BOC intercepted last month at the Eva Macapagal Domestic Terminal Container Yard of the Port of Manila.

Customs Commissioner Angelito Alvarez ordered today the seizure of a huge volume of smuggled sugar which were found by customs intelligence operatives in the same industrial compound in Bulacan where some 26,000 bags of smuggled onions from China and India were confiscated only a week ago.

The long slumbering Port of San Fernando in La Union, utilized mainly by rice, coal and fertilizer shippers, will soon become a hub for the fast, safe, cost-efficient and convenient movement of containerized cargoes in Region I.

Thousands of counterfeit goods were destroyed this morning as the Bureau of Customs conducted one of its biggest condemnations of confiscated smuggled products this early in the year.