Masbate governor must be sent back to jail – Ombudsman

The Office of the Ombudsman on Thursday maintained that there is strong evidence of guilt to warrant the continued detention of Masbate Gov. Rizalina Seachon-Lanete in connection with a plunder case over her alleged involvement in the so-called pork barrel scam.

In a 66-page motion for reconsideration filed with the Sandiganbayan Fourth Division on Thursday, the Ombudsman, through its Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) said the court erred in granting bail to Lanete and her co-accused, businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the suspected mastermind of the so-called pork barrel scam.

“Plaintiff respectfully submits that the Resolution should be reconsidered because the findings therein are contrary to the evidence, rules and jurisprudence. Moreover, the Resolution is vitiated by errors that amount to a violation or deprivation of the State’s fundamental right to due process of law,” the OSP’s motion read.

In its April 12 ruling, the Fourth Division granted the respective bail petitions of Lanete and Napoles for their plunder case saying that the prosecution failed to present a strong evidence of guilt against them at t he course of almost a year of bail hearings.

For one, the court said, “it was not clearly shown how accused Lanete participated in the scheme described by the prosecution”.

Secondly, the court said the prosecution also failed to prove that Lanete illegally amassed from the pork scam at least P50 million worth of kickbacks, the threshold amount for a crime to be considered as plunder.

In its motion for reconsideration, however, the OSP maintained that based on the daily disbursement report (DDR) of Benhur Luy, the primary state witness in the pork barrel scam cases, Lanete received kickbacks totaling P76,078,750  by allocating her Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF)  to the fake non-government organization (NGOs) allegedly owned by Napoles.

The OSP said the court’s exclusion of 32 items in Luy’s DDR list totaling P34,878,850 is erroneous and “against legal standards” as the Fourth Division supposedly based its decision solely on the ground that these items were not submarked by the prosecution as evidence.

The OSP pointed out that the entire DDR was marked by the prosecution as evidence, thus submarking the items in it was just “discretionary” and not mandatory.

“Failure to sub-mark portions of a document marked, formally offered and admitted in evidence should not thus be equated with the intention to exclude such portions as part of the evidence,” the OSP’s motion read.

“In the present case, the items in DDRs of Luy which were excluded by the Honorable Court were offered in evidence collectively, and at the same time, in their entirety, were not objected to by the defense and admitted by the Honorable Court,” it added.

Lanete and Napoles are facing plunder and graft cases before the Fourth Division for the alleged misuse of the former’s PDAF or pork barrel during her term as a Masbate representative.

Graft is a bailable offense while plunder is non-bailable if the prosecution would be able to prove that the evidence of guilt against an accused is strong.

Based on the information of the case filed by the Office of the Ombudsman in February last year, Lanete received a total of P108.4-million worth of kickbacks by allocating her PDAF from 2004 to 2010 to fake foundations allegedly owned by Napoles.

In its ruling, however, the court pointed out that even the prosecution admitted during the bail proceedings that Napoles and Lanete never met to discuss the latter’s supposed percentage of kickbacks from the projects to be funded by her PDAF.

The court also noted that Luy, during the bail hearing, admitted that there was never an instance that he personally handed money to Lanete.

In its motion for reconsideration, however, the OSP maintained that Lanete’s endorsement and allocation of her PDAF to the NGOs-linked with Napoles without holding a public bidding can already be considered as an act of conspiracy.

“The flaw in the reasoning of the Honorable Court is that in effect, it thinks that the culpability of accused Lanete could only be established if there is proof of personal dealings between her and accused Napoles,” the motion read.

“This disregard the provision in the Plunder Law that the amassing of ill-gotten wealth could be accomplished by the public official directly or indirectly,” it added.

The prosecution pointed out that the Supreme Court, in an earlier ruling (People vs Damaso), had stated that “conspiracy merely implies concert of design and does not require participation in every detail of the execution [of the crime]”.

“There is such a thing under our jurisprudence as the doctrine of ‘implied conspiracy’ which means that a conspiracy can be inferred even in the absence of an actual meeting between or among the parties,” the OSP said.

The OSP urged the court to revisit all the records of the case including the transcripts of stenographic notes (TSNs) numbering 2,388 pages, taken during 21 dates of hearings and 5,614 pieces of documentary exhibits.

The OSP said that upon careful review of the TSNs and the documentary exhibits, the court will be reminded of the testimonies from local officials, the findings of the Commission on Audit, and results of the on-site verification conducted by the Ombudsman’s Field Investigation Office collectively confirming that the projects funded by Lanete’s PDAF and supposedly implemented by NGOs owned by accused Napoles are “ghosts” or non-existent.

Lanete, on April 13, was released from the Bureau of Jail Management Penology (BJMP) Female Dormitory at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City after posting P850,000 bail bond.

Napoles, meanwhile, remains in detention at the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong City following her conviction by the Makati Regional Trial Court of illegal detention in a case filed by Luy. — APG, GMA News