Sandiganbayan asked to recall arrest orders vs tax scam case respondents

MANILA, Philippines – The Sandiganbayan is being asked to recall the arrest warrants issued against two private individuals implicated in a P73-million tax credit certificate scam.

Spouses Faustino and Gloria Ching- koe, who are facing plunder charges along with a number of government officials, said “the particular evidence upon which the court relied in finding probable cause to justify issuance of warrants of arrest has not been identified.”

In their motion filed through lawyer Estelito P. Mendoza, they explained that records of the preliminary investigation conducted by the Office of the Ombudsman which became the basis for the issuance of the arrest warrants against them on April 3, 2009, failed to establish conspiracy between private and respondent government officials to amass ill-gotten wealth.

They stressed that private individuals may only be accused of plunder when they connived with a public officer who has himself amassed ill-gotten wealth.

The public respondents in the plunder charge include former Finance Assistant Secretary Antonio Belicena who was also executive director and administrator of the One-Stop-Shop Inter-Agency Tax Credit and Duty Drawback Center (Center) in the 1990s.

The Chinkoes, who were included in the complaint as owners of Filstar Textile Industrial Corp., claimed that there is no piece of evidence or sworn statement showing that the public officers accused in the information accumulated ill-gotten wealth as defined under Republic Act 7080.

“There is not a piece of evidence in the records of the preliminary investigation attached to the information, and on the basis of which the warrants of arrest were issued, showing that any of the accused public officers amassed, accumulated or acquired ill-gotten wealth,” they said.

“There being no evidence, the issuance of the warrants of arrest is in violation of the Bill of Rights, particularly Section 2, Article III of the Constitution, and they are consequently void and must be recalled.”

The spouses said their motion to recall warrants of arrest “is based on the submission that no evidence is before the court upon which it may be concluded that the accused (as well as the other accused) have committed the offense of plunder and may be arrested.”

They said that “a warrant of arrest shall be issued only upon a finding of probable cause to be personally determined by the judge as explicitly required by the Constitution.”