Ombudsman, Sandigan, SC have 'long' records in resolving Marcos cases

MANILA, Philippines - The Office of the Ombudsman, the Sandiganbayan, and even the Supreme Court have dismally “long” records on the time they take to resolve numerous ill-gotten wealth cases filed before them against the heirs of the late deposed president Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies.

This according to the findings of a third party audit conducted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the American Bar Association (ABA) for the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) on pending civil and criminal cases under resolution by the Ombudsman, the anti-graft court, and the highest court of the land.

The audit showed that the average age of an ill-gotten wealth case pending before the Ombudsman is almost nine years, while for the Sandiganbayan, it is 20 years.

Meanwhile, the average time for the Supreme Court to resolve mere “incidents,” or interlocutory appeals, the many motions that can be filed by parties questioning rulings on various issues elevated to it from the Ombudsman, is six years.

On the other hand, the average age of pending motions elevated to the Supreme Court from cases pending before the Sandiganbayan is nine years.

The findings were presented yesterday in a Good Governance and Asset Forfeiture forum held at the Marriot Hotel in the Newport City Complex in Pasay City organized by the PCGG under its Haydee Yorac Lecture Series in celebration of the commission’s 25th anniversary this year.

Racquel Ruiz-Dimalanta, ABA consultant, said 25 years after the EDSA 1 revolution and the creation of the PCGG, majority of the civil and criminal cases filed against the Marcoses and their cronies are still pending before the Sandiganbayan and the Supreme Court, if not still under resolution by the Ombudsman.

A check on records showed that 78 percent of cases pending before the Sandiganbayan are still unresolved.

Dimalanta said the interlocutory appeals filed either by the PCGG or the defendants were the major causes of delay in the resolution of the ill-gotten wealth cases.

The long resolution of interlocutory appeals, filed before the Sandiganbayan and the Supreme Court, also aggravate the problem, with the time to decide on such appeals, in the case of the High Tribunal, taking an average of six years to as long as 21 years, the audit said.

Dimalanta said the audit of the pending ill-gotten wealth cases against the Marcoses raised the need for the courts, particularly the Sandiganbayan and the Supreme Court, to restrict the acceptance of such interlocutory appeals.

“There’s a need to circumscribe interlocutory appeals and other efforts to reduce case age,” Dimalanta said.

Senator Teofisto Guingona III, chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, who was a guest in the forum, expressed alarm over the findings of the USAID-ABA audit.

Guingona said the slow wheels of justice at the Sandiganbayan and the Supreme Court answered the question on why there was no Marcos heir or crony who has gone to jail for ill-gotten wealth.

“Nobody has gone to jail yet because there is something very wrong with the system,” Guingona said.

Robert Courtney, of the US Department of Justice, shared that to them, such old cases are unheard of due to a prohibition on the filing of interlocutory appeals in the middle of the case proceedings.

“Actually, we don’t allow interlocutory appeals. They are all put together at the end of the litigation. So cases are expedited,” Courtney said during the forum.