Smuggled 2010 Lamborghini Murcielago in Philippines

Philippine's Bureau of Customs revealed yesterday that they filed a case against a car dealer who managed to bring . Based on the video below, the basic version of 2010 Lamborghini Murcielago costs US$455,000. But that's before it was released. I tried to get an online quote on this and the MSRP is now "only" US$354,000. At PHP45 to a dollar, that translates to PHP15,900,000. And since this is a completely built unit (CBU) luxury car, the tax rate can go as high as 100%. So I believe the car that was smuggled in was not a basic Murcielago because Customs is expecting a PHP25.2M tax when they received only 3.3M. That's only about 13% of the required tax duty.

By the way, here's the 2010 Lamborghini Murcielago in a car show last year.



We all know that this has been going on for quite some time. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if Willie Revillame's Ferrari was brought in the country that way. People may remember when a few years ago, there's a shop in Makati selling luxury cars at . When the Customs personnel asked for the papers, they can't show any. I don't know what happened after that but I can remember that it was found out that JV Ejercito owns one of the cars there. Again, we don't know what happened after all the photo ops. Has anyone been charged?

On another note, I agree with Sec. Purisima when he said that the supposed owner of the car must have paid a heck of an income tax if he was able to buy that car. If he did not (which I expect), then there must be something wrong. Like in the case of Villarica, how can you buy a car this expensive if you are not earning much? And if you earn so much, why can't you pay your tax?

I'm quite excited with what will be the future development of this. If they would be able to pin down and successfully charge and convict the people involved, then it would be a boost into the perception for the 'common tao' that P'Noy's government mean business. That the 'small and big fishes' will be dealt with accordingly.