Responding to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's decision to remove corrupt officials from the administration, Department of Finance Minister Carlos Dominguez III dismissed two regional executives of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
BIR is the Philippine government's revenue collector agency under the supervision of the Department of Finance and it collects more than half of the country's revenues.
Dominguez said that his legal team is already preparing the documents so that proper legal charges can be filed against the executives.
"I dismissed two regional heads who were involved in harassing taxpayers so they have been moved out of their offices and are now waiting to be charged," Dominguez was quoted by the Philippine press.
The finance executive refused to name the two internal revenue regional heads but he added that aside from the two executives his office also earlier dismissed other employees at BIR reportedly involved in anomalous activities.
While his office has dismissed BIR employees involved in graft and corruption, Dominguez said that he is, on the other hand, strengthening the internal services of the department so he can facilitate the upgrade of salaries of his department to boost the morale of his employees.
Dominquez also announced before journalists that he commended the anti-corruption campaign of the Bureau of Customs (BoC) for confiscating goods from smuggling activities. The Bureau also collected fees in the amount of P 8.4 million (or USD 168,000) from August 2016 to August 2017.
BoC is also another agency supervised by the Department of Finance that collects duties and taxes from imported goods and products.
Duterte has warned government officials that he is willing to dismiss close friends in the bureaucracy whenever he hears that they are involved in corrupt practices. He also gave this order to all his cabinet ministers.
Two cabinet ministers were dismissed by Duterte last year known to be his close friends at the Department of Interior and Local Government and the National Irrigation Administration.
