Senator Francis "Chiz" Escudero said Friday the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group (PASG) should be spared from intrigues if the government is serious in bolstering its revenue collections.

Escudero said intrigues and other efforts to besmirch the reputation of PASG and its chairman Antonio Villar through misinformation are chipping away at efforts to address the corruption problem in the country.

“It has become apparent that this is what opponents of Chairman Villar and the PASG want,” Escudero said.

Edward Chang, the president of the Korean Chamber of Commerce had accused the PASG of extorting money from Korean-owned businesses in the country. He claimed that PASG agents harassed a company called PKSS Enterprises.

But in a media report Saturday, PASG director for administration and finance Jeffrey Patawaran denied the accusations and said PKSS executive Wan Sup Park had apologized for the mention of extortion in Chang’s letter.

Chang had also written to Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita expressing the chamber’s “regret” in “the leakage of private communication to the media as well as the failure to clarify the events after the letter.”

Escudero said allegations of extortion activities against Korean companies in the country have already been debunked by the personalities who are supposedly victims of the alleged extortion.

“This just goes to show how far smugglers and other affected parties will go to disrupt what has been an outstanding job by the PASG in curbing smuggling and stamping out corruption. These criminal elements are apparently hurting from the PASG’s activities,” the opposition lawmaker said.
 
“We should take the PASG’s anti-smuggling campaign as a positive development since the Bureau of Customs (BoC) has failed to meet its collection target and has been largely inutile against smuggling and corruption,” Escudero added.

Escudero said the BoC missed its revenue collection target for the first eight months of this year to P147.22 billion, short of its official goal for the period of P175.43 billion by 16 percent.