Garcia plea deal upheld

MANILA, Philippines - Former military comptroller Carlos Garcia’s plea bargaining agreement with the Office of the Ombudsman was declared legal yesterday.

The Sandiganbayan said Garcia would have been acquitted of plunder and money laundering charges without the agreement.

Based on the prosecution’s evidence, the task of determining how Garcia used his post to steal public funds “would be as difficult as looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack,” the court added.

Requiring Garcia to surrender his and his family’s assets before approving the plea bargaining agreement on May 19, 2011 prevented him from backing out when he had the chance of being acquitted, the Sandiganbayan said.

Garcia may now surrender to the government P135.4-million worth of real properties, bank accounts, and vehicles, including a P43.1-million condominium unit in Trump Park Avenue, New York.

Based on the plea bargaining agreement, Garcia pleaded not guilty to the lesser crimes of direct bribery and facilitating money laundering in December 2010.

He was allowed to post bail in the amount of P60,000.

The Sandiganbayan rejected the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG)’s request to be allowed to intervene in the case to move for the voiding of the plea bargaining agreement.

The appeal is being denied “for utter paucity of merit,” the court added.

The Sandiganbayan said the OSG is wrong in claiming that it has the power and authority to represent the government in cases where the Republic of the Philippines is the injured party.

“Neither did it grumble, nor attempt to intervene, as what it is doing in these (Garcia) cases because, at that time, it was well aware that it has no legal authority to interfere in litigation or proceedings that is within the exclusive domain of the Office of the Ombudsman,” the court said.

“The glaring reality that the OSG must learn to accept is this: that it has no statutory authority to represent the state, the people, (and) the government of the Republic of the Philippines in all criminal cases filed before the Sandiganbayan or in any of the 1st and 2nd level courts in the Philippines.”

The Sandiganbayan said the OSG’s actions favored Garcia because the “baseless and unthought of maneuverings” might eventually result in acquittal and without the government recovering a single centavo.

The Sandiganbayan said the evidence was insufficient to convict Garcia of the crime of plunder based on the allegation that he received commissions, gifts, kickbacks from government contractors in the total amount of P303 million since he was even accused of malversation of public funds or raiding the national treasury.

The admission of Garcia’s wife Clarita before US authorities that her husband received kickbacks as military comptroller cannot be used against him, the court added.

The Sandiganbayan said it had not acquired jurisdiction over Clarita and that the truth of her admissions were not testified to in court.

“An extra-judicial confession is binding only upon the confessant and is not admissible against co-accused,” the court said.

The Sandiganbayan said Audit Commissioner Heidi Mendoza testified that she found no irregularities in transactions that would prove that Garcia personally received money or misappropriated or derived personal benefit from it.

“While the bulk of the prosecution’s evidence may establish the existence of supposed irregularities in the AFP, they do not dovetail to pinpoint liability on the accused... for the offense of plunder,” the court said.

The Sandiganbayan said it “cannot just gratuitously assume” that the money of Garcia and his family were accumulated by reason of his position in the military.

“None of the numerous witnesses presented by the prosecution positively testified that those amounts were illegally taken by accused from the government coffers, and nobody even dwelt on where the accused obtained the amounts that he and his family had deposited,” the court said.

“In the absence of any linkage on how and from where the accused acquired the huge sums of money, the hands of the court are tied from finding justifiable basis to convict the accused of plunder. Mere possession of the money is simply not adequate.”

The Sandiganbayan said the position paper filed by Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales on Sept. 16, 2011 further muddled the issue.

“We are really puzzled with the indecisive posture of the new Ombudsman,” court said.

“While in one breath she claims that the challenged plea bargaining agreement ‘partakes the nature of a compromise agreement,’ yet, in another breath, she refused to repudiate the acts of the previous Ombudsman.”

The Sandiganbayan said Morales practically presented a turnabout on the plea bargaining agreement that the Office of the Ombudsman under Merceditas Gutierrez had submitted for approval.