MANILA: Just over two months after being appointed as commissioner of the Bureau of Customs, Alberto Lina is facing graft and plunder charges at the Office of the Ombudsman.
Lina, as well as former Customs Commissioner Guillermo Parayno Jr. and former Customs Deputy Commissioner Primo Aguas are being sued for supposedly cancelling without any basis a P650-million contract on the integrated window processing system for the Bureau of Customs (BOC).
The officials must be held liable for influencing the bidding and cancelling the P650-million contract, Annabelle Margaroli of Omni Prime Marketing Inc.-Intrasoft Joint Venture (OMI-Intrasoft JV), said in a 30-page complaint.
Margaroli was assisted by OMI legal counsel Harry Roque in the filing the complaint.
The contract covers the creation of a National Single Window (NSW) system, a central database that for trackick in real time all Customs procedures and transactions nationwide.
In November 2014, OMI-Intrasoft, E-Konek Pilipinas and three other bidders submitted their eligibility documents for the project, Margaroli said, noting that Lina has a 96.48 percent stake in E-Konek.
Then in Decembert the BOC disqualified the three bidders except for OMI-Intrasoft and E-Konek.
Parayno is the president of E-Konek, the current BOC database provider.
OMI-Intrasoft submitted all the technical and financial proposals, and was invited to join the bidding last February, according to the complaint.
But Deputy Commissioner who “… was not part of the Bids and Awards Committee, stepped in and required the OMI project team to undergo a series of interviews,” Margaroli claimed.
“This undue imposition by Aguas delayed the selection of the Highest Rated Bid (HRB) for nearly two months,” she said.
While the interview process was still ongoing, Aguas made a public announcement that if the bidding fails there would be a rebidding or an updated version of the current database would be adopted, Margaroli noted.
On April 13, 2015, OMI-Intrasoft was declared the winner and the contract was finalized after a week. It was scheduled to be signed at the end of that month.
But on April 24, Lina replaced then Customs Commissioner John Sevilla who resigned from his post.
Two weeks after Lina was appointed by President Benigno Aquino III to the bureau, he canceled the P650-million contract.
