Enforcement or Infringement? Cell Phone War and Corruption in Ciudad del Este

By Mirta Miyasaki

The victims allege their containers where retained by claims filed by the TM Attorneys representing multinational companies before the Prosecutor´s Office.

Before the clearance procedure was initiated at Customs; they say a message was received from an interested party with a proposal: the payment of a one dollar (U$1) “fee/toll (peaje)” per product; or an imminent intervention, verification and seizure of the involved products, which implied the risk of the products to be changed or vanished in very strange circumstances.

One of the victims explained that at first, the proposal sounded reasonable for the sake of their business, so the bribary was paid on one occasion. They accepted the offer of paying one dollar (U$1) for each cell phone introduced into the country. Keep in mind that this case involves: one hundred thousand phones = One hundred thousand dollars. This is not a very interesting “formula” if you are on the paying side.

But the situation was repeated on several occasion s, every time a container with cell phones arrived. And the same story was repeated … an investigation had to start.

Every time a container with cell phones arrived, the same story was repeated... an investigation had to start. After approximately 3 weeks of that incident, a Prosecutor assigned to the Region (Ciudad del Este) was suspended by a Jury in charge of Judicial misconduct; and other cases are currently under study.

Meetings have been organized among the involved institutions such as: Customs, Attorney General Office and Ministry of Industry of Commerce. The General Customs Administrator is emphasizing their will to create a Customs TM Registration (!!) … but it seems they are not aware that Customs has already launched their TM Registration Department by an official Resolution N° 101 of February 22, 2009!!?.

Communication and coordination is necessary within, among and between each of the involved Institutions in our country… So far, it is obvious that we are not moving forward on this matter, but in my opinion quite backwards, and I stop and wonder sometimes: Is there any real will to change and to fight corruption in Paraguay? I am not sure there is an answer to my questions; but one thing is clear, we can not stop fighting corruption at all levels.