Perez orders probe on DOJ case fixing

The chief of staff of Justice Secretary Hernando Perez faces an investigation following reports that she had demanded P250,000 from an American doctor accused of maltreating his 18-year-old son.

Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño told reporters yesterday Perez has ordered him to look into allegations of "case-fixing" in the Department of Justice without naming Senior State Prosecutor Pamela Escobar.

"The department order did not specifically state that Escobar be investigated, but the order for me was to investigate allegations of case-fixing," he said.

However, Escobar told reporters she will conduct her own investigation to find out the source of the reported "resolution-for-sale" scam.

Zuño said the inquiry will be administrative in nature as Escobar would be asked to present evidence to counter the allegations, while investigators determine if money had changed hands.

Zuño said he would temporarily head the investigating panel but that next week it will be assigned to prosecutors, whom he did not identify.

Unimpeachable sources told The STAR yesterday a "draft resolution" has already been prepared to reverse a Makati prosecutor’s decision to charge the American in court.

Escobar had allegedly received a 50 percent down payment from the American’s lawyer but that it was not known if she had already been given the full P250,000, the same sources added.

Demoralization has reportedly swept the rank and file personnel of the justice department because Escobar was said to have transferred personnel to other bureaus without any reason.

However, Perez stood by Escobar, who was his student at the Ateneo de Manila law school in the early 1980s, saying that she was just carrying out his orders.

Perez said the "centralizing" of the flow of papers at the justice department was justified as it is just being "sorted out," and that the transfer of functions of undersecretaries was being done on a rotation basis.

But a check showed that the papers were already segregated and that the 300 cases for review should have been forwarded to Undersecretary Merceditas Gutierrez since these had come from the office of Undersecretary Manuel Teehankee.

Teehankee was stripped of his power to review cases involving jail terms of six years and below, which were transferred to Gutierrez through Department Order 351.

However, the folders of more than 300 cases were sent to Escobar’s office instead of being given to Gutierrez.