BIR, BOC taking legal action vs. Mighty Corp. for tax evasion – DOF's Dominguez

The Bureaus of Internal Revenue (BIR) and of Customs (BOC) are now gathering evidence before submitting an air-tight, tax evasion case against cigarette maker Mighty Corp. before the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Finance said on Tuesday.

"The government needs to first establish strong evidence to pin down this cigarette manufacturer on such charges," Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said.

"We must make sure the charges stick not only to haul the guilty parties, including their possible cohorts in the government, into jail but to send a clear message to big-time tax dodgers that the Duterte administration is dead set on putting an end to their nefarious activities and sending all of them behind bars," the Cabinet official noted

"They should speed up their investigations and also look into the possible involvement of bureaucrats acting as protectors of these large-scale tax evasion attempts," he said.

Dominguez issued the statement on the heels of his call for the BIR and BOC last week to file the appropriate charges against persons and companies proven to be the owners of P2.2 billion worth of smuggled and counterfeit tobacco products, shoes and clothes that government agents recently seized in a series of raids.

Among the seized goods were cigarette brands manufactured by Mighty Corp. with fake tax stamps that BOC operatives seized in Pampanga and the cities of General Santos and Zamboanga in Mindanao. — VDS GMA News