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Janet Napoles will remain in prison despite the acquittal as she serves her sentence in her other cases, where she had been convicted
MANILA, Philippines – Anti-graft court Sandiganbayan cleared businesswoman Janet Napoles and former executives of the National Livelihood Development Council (NLDC) of graft and malversation charges on Wednesday, September 18, in connection with the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam.
The 98-page decision found prosecutors’ evidence insufficient to convict Napoles, NLDC president Gondelina Amata, and NLDC assets management division chief Gregorio Buenaventura.
The three were accused of diverting P5 million from the pork barrel allocations of former La Union congressman Victor Francisco Ortega to Social Development Program for Farmers Foundation Incorporated (SDPFFI), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) linked to Napoles.
Prosecutors alleged that Ortega’s pork barrel funds were released to NLDC, a government-owned or -controlled corporation (GOCC), which then wired P4.85 million (after deducing “administration costs” of P150,000) to SDPFFI.
They claimed the money went to the pockets of Napoles and the NLDC officials among others, instead of Ortega’s district to finance his livelihood programs.
Prosecutors also tried to prove that the foundation did not exist by showing that the NGO’s office address was in Laguna instead of La Union.
“Verily, business entities can still exist, and business transactions can still be conducted, albeit illegitimately, even without a valid office address,” the ruling read.
Prosecutors, using the findings of the Ombudsman’s Field Investigation Office (FIO), also tried to refute the existence of farmer-beneficiaries of the livelihood project in Bangar, La Union, but the court cast doubts on the accuracy of the probe’s results.
“The passage of six years raises a lot of possibilities: the NGO may have moved or relocated to another office, and the named beneficiaries may have died, moved or relocated to another place making it challenging for the FIO to locate them,” the court said.
“The prosecution was not able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these witnesses were the very same persons referred to in the list of beneficiaries and not any other individual who had also resided in La Union and who happened to also have exactly the same names,” it added.
The court also said Amata and Buenaventura could not be faulted for trusting Ortega’s endorsement of SDPFFI, since at the time of the project’s implementation in 2008 and 2009, the Supreme Court had not yet declared illegal endorsements of NGOs made by lawmakers to execute their programs.
Napoles, however, will remain behind bars at the Correctional Institution for Women, despite the acquittal in this particular case, as she serves prison time for her conviction of plunder and multiple counts of graft, malversation of public funds, and corruption of a public official. – Rappler.com
