Manny Pacquiao meets P-Noy for courtesy call, both camps mum on tax issues

A courtesy call to the Philippine president has usually been on Manny Pacquiao’s to-do list after he returns to the Philippines after winning a big fight abroad. But for his recent win against Brandon Rios in Macau, Pacquiao was instead met by the Bureau and Internal Revenue and instead of a grand welcome,  he was met with a garnishment of some of his bank accounts due to supposedly unpaid taxes.

Three weeks after the Clash in Cotai, Pacquiao has finally made his courtesy call with Philippine President Noynoy Aquino, Wednesday in Malacanang. They two had a close-door meeting, which was followed by statements from both camps

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“Well, I’m ready to listen to whatever he wants to talk about,” Aquino said of Pacquiao in Filipino.

After the BIR froze his accounts, Pacquiao went to the media and said that the garnishment was politically driven. The government and Pacquiao’s camp had a brief mud-slinging battle until it was halted by a court-issued gag order.

It seemed like Pacquiao and the government were on a collision course but the president diffused the situation by saying that their failure to meet early was just caused by conflicts in their schedules.

“It was during the period for Yolanda reliefs,” said the president. “Even Manny went there to help out so I think he was just busy and I also think that I was busier. There’s no other point than the scheduling conflict.”

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“The president and I were both busy,” explained Pacquiao. “He was busy attending to problems while I was busy preparing for the trip to Tacloban and then preparing for my birthday.”

Both parties refused to address the elephant in the room, which was Pacquiao’s tax issue. The boxer has already assigned his financial adviser Mike Koncz to fly to the United States to sort things out. Pacquiao is still without an opponent for his upcoming fight this April.