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CUSTOMS Commissioner Napoleon Morales ordered a probe on 48 sacks of ammonium sulfate found in a shipment of rice from Vietnam. Authorities said ammonium sulfate is a fertilizer that could be used to make bombs. The shipment of rice was consigned to the National Food Authority, but NFA officials denied they imported the fertilizer. National administrator Jessup Navarro ordered the 20,000 bags of rice previously unloaded from the m/v Trai Thien 66 sealed off to pave the way for an investigation on the reported findings of unknown substance mixed with the rice shipments from Vietnam, the agency said in a statement late Friday. He also stopped unloading of the shipment balance still in the vessel until the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency has completed the analysis of the unknown substance mixed with the rice shipment, the NFA said. It was the exporter—in this case Vietnam—that directly chartered the ship to deliver the rice cargo, Navarro said. He noted that the shipment would then be unloaded at various ports in the Philippines. “This is also a case of technical smuggling, because the fertilizer is undeclared. We want the NFA to explain why there was fertilizer in the shipment,” Morales said. The initial information Morales got was that the Trai Thien 66 was carrying dangerous drugs when it arrived at Bredco Port in Bacolod on Wednesday. Those behind this shipment would be held liable, he said. It was the NFA’s quality control officer who discovered the unknown shipment bundled with the sacks of rice, Navarro said. “It is a strict policy of the NFA to continuously conduct random sampling of rice shipments to check if the imported rice adhere to the required quality specifications before unloading them from the vessel.” Customs, however, said its agents discovered the fertilizer while sacks of rice were being unloaded from the vessel. The bags of ammonium sulfate were initially identified as ephedrine, an ingredient in making methamphetamine hydrochloride or the synthetic drug shabu. Based on the ship’s cargo manifest Customs got, the ship was supposed to be carrying 77,000 bags of long white rice packed in 50-kilo polypropylene bags. From the crew’s manifest, the authorities said there were 18 Vietnamese nationals and the ship’s captain was identified as Bui Van Chinh. As the ammonium was not declared, Morales said he would ask the Port of Iloilo’s district collector for a warrant to seize and detain the contraband that could later be forfeited in favor of the government. “We don’t want to drag the NFA entirely in this issue, because there could be someone else or other unscrupulous individuals who were really behind the shipment,” Morales said. The vessel, reportedly owned and operated Trai Thien Shipping Co. Ltd., would not be allowed to leave Iloilo while the probe is ongoing. Source from: Manila Standard Today (http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideNation.htm?f=2010/january/30/nation1.isx&d=2010/january/30)
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