NO PLUNDER
FORMER Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, as well as his former secretary Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes and businesswoman Janet Napoles, were acquitted of plunder.
The Sandiganbayan Third Division, in its 84-page decision, said the prosecution panel failed to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt in the P172-million plunder case filed in connection with the pork barrel scam.
Enrile is the current Chief legal counsel of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The Sandiganbayan decision came after it granted Enrile’s demurrer to evidence motion concerning his plunder case.
A demurrer to evidence is filed once the prosecution has rested its case.
The anti-graft court said the government prosecutors’ evidence such as testimonies of witnesses Benhur Luy and Ruby Tuason — on top of Luy’s Daily Disbursement Report (DDR) showing that Enrile and Reyes received money from Napoles — are insufficient to prove that Enrile and Reyes indeed received money from Napoles.
Enrile and his co-accused were alleged to have amassed P172 million from the senator’s Priority Development Assistance Fund.
“To prove plunder, the prosecution must weave a web out of the six ways of illegally amassing wealth and show how the various acts reveal a combination or series of means or schemes that reveal a pattern of criminality. The prosecution failed to establish with moral certainty that either Enrile and/or Reyes received these amounts from Tuason (the alleged agent of Napoles). At any rate, the sum of these five DDRs amounted to only P46,387,500 million,” the ruling read.
The court also doubted Luy’s DDRs or list of people who are receiving money from Napoles off pork barrel transactions, since the prosecution was not able to present the original copies of the DDR to prove its case.
“We point out that the DDRs that were printed by Luy sometime in 2013 from the data stored in his external drive were all unsigned; and that per Luy, the original copies of the said DDRs which are all signed copies were at the vault at the office of JLN Corporation, together with the checks corresponding thereto, which miserably the prosecution failed to present as evidence,” the Sandiganbayan said.
The plunder complaint was filed against Enrile, Reyes and Napoles and others were filed by the Ombudsman.
Enrile and his co-accused were alleged to have amassed P172 million from the senator’s Priority Development Assistance Fund from 2004 to 2010.
On the part of Napoles, despite her acquittal, she remains in jail because of the two more plunder convictions also in connection with the pork barrel scam.
The plunder case was filed against Enrile and the others in June 2014.