The Bureau of Customs filed criminal complaints on Sept. 22 against 14 people — including nine of its own officials and personnel assigned to the Subic port — over six shipments that arrived in June 2025 declared as "chicken lollipops" but that customs examiners found actually contained 15,029 sacks of fresh white onions and 2,164 boxes of fresh carrots, worth a combined ₱17.5 million, none of it carrying the sanitary and phytosanitary import clearance the law requires.
Customs Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno filed the complaints before the Department of Justice, charging the group with violating Republic Act 10863, the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, including provisions covering officials who willfully neglect their duties or enable revenue fraud. The BOC personnel implicated also face separate administrative charges within the bureau. "We will not cover up for anyone, nor will we tolerate any violation," Nepomuceno said in announcing the case.
Beyond the nine BOC personnel, the complaints name representatives of the importer, Berches Consumer Goods Trading, and a licensed customs broker who handled the shipments. The bureau has not released the names or specific positions of the nine implicated officials and personnel, leaving unanswered exactly what role each played in letting six shipments of misdeclared produce through a port examination process meant to catch precisely this kind of substitution.
The chosen disguise was not incidental. Fresh onions and carrots are subject to import restrictions and clearance requirements specifically because the Philippines has, in recent years, seen onion prices spike sharply enough to trigger public anger and legislative scrutiny of hoarding and smuggling. Declaring a shipment of onions and carrots as poultry parts is a way around a control that exists because of that history — which makes the sixteen months between the June 2025 shipment and this week's charges a question the bureau has not addressed: what triggered the case now, and what happened to the ₱17.5 million in produce in the interim.
The bureau says the case fits a broader enforcement push: since 2025, it has filed 96 criminal cases against 288 respondents and confiscated ₱13.7 billion worth of smuggled goods. Whether this case moves any faster than that backlog, or whether the nine implicated personnel face suspension before the DOJ even acts on the criminal complaint, remains to be seen.
Context
The case adds to a run of enforcement actions the BOC has publicized as part of a stated crackdown on trade misdeclaration, following years of scrutiny over agricultural smuggling that lawmakers have tied to price spikes for onions, garlic, and rice.
Sources
- BOC files raps vs 9 personnel over 'chicken lollipops' — Philstar.com, Sept. 23, 2026