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By Jomar Canlas, Reporter
The Sandiganbayan First Division on Friday
junked a plea of former Justice Secretary Hernando Perez for the
dismissal of graft charges filed against him by the Office of the
Ombudsman.
In a resolution, Diosdado Peralta, the presiding justice and
chairman of the division, ruled that Perez and his co-accused must
stand trial and that his motion to quash was denied.
The court said allegations of Perez that the
filing of the charges against him was politically motivated and a
violation of his right to due process were devoid of merit.
It pointed out that Ombudsman Merceditas
Navarro-Gutierrez has the duty to prosecute and whether her filing
of the charges was politically motivated was “not determinative of
her authority to file the same.”
The First Division said the Ombudsman is
empowered to determine existence of reasonable ground to believe
that the crime has been committed and that Perez and the other
accused were “probably guilty.”
It stressed that a motion to quash was not the
proper remedy and that all the accused should stand trial.
The First Division cited a ruling of the Supreme
Court that said “the mere happen stance alone that the preliminary
investigation took more than one year and four months to finish, or
any like delay, for that matter, should not be cause for an
unfettered abdication by the court of its duty to try cases and to
finally make a determination of the controversy after the
presentation of evidence.”
It ordered the arraignment of the accused on
September 5, 2008.
Perez should have been arraigned on Friday, but
the court decided to reschedule the arraignment to give time to all
the accused to file a motion for reconsideration of the dismissed
petition.
In the meantime, the former Justice secretary
asked the Sandiganbayan to consider his request for consolidation of
the four cases filed against him and assign them to a single
division.
Gutierrez ordered the filing of criminal charges
before the Sandiganbayan against Perez and his wife and two others
in connection with extortion charges filed by former Rep. Mark
Jimenez of Manila. According to Jimenez, Perez got $2 million from
him as alleged bribe for approval of an energy deal with an
Argentine firm.
Gutierrez was then undersecretary of the
Department of Justice and Perez the secretary.
The Ombudsman ordered the filing of charges of
robbery-extortion (Article 294 in relation to Article 293 of the
Revised Penal Code) and Violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt
Practices Act (Republic Act 3019) against Perez, his wife Rosario,
his brother-in-law Ramon Arceo and business associate Ernest Escaler
before the Sandiganbayan.
The two counts of graft charges are with the
First Division and Fourth Division of the Sandiganbayan, while the
robbery case is with the Second Division.
The Ombudsman had resolved that Perez acted
“in conspiracy” with Escaler, Arceo and his wife, Rosario, who
“took advantage of his position as the then [Justice] secretary by
demanding Jimenez to deliver the amount of $2 million in connection
with the execution of affidavits to be used in the case against
former President [Joseph] Estrada.”
Perez was also charged by the Ombudsman with
falsification of public documents for not disclosing in his 2001
Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth the amount of $1.7
million deposited in his and his wife’s bank accounts. This case
is pending with the Second Division of the Sandiganbayan.
The Ombudsman said records showed that Jimenez
deposited $2 million on February 23, 2003, in beneficiary account
HO133706 of Coutts Bank in Hong Kong, from Trade and Commerce Bank,
Cayman Islands, through the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.
Bank documents provided by both Swiss and Hong
Kong authorities established the transfer of the money from
Escaler’s Coutts Bank account to the Swiss accounts of Rosario and
Arceo.
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