SC upholds Sandiganbayan jurisdiction on criminal cases vs Disini

MANILA, Philippines - There is no more legal impediment for the trial of businessman Herminio Disini, alleged crony of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, before the Sandiganbayan for criminal cases related to the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP).

This came after the Supreme Court (SC) dismissed Disini’s petition seeking to stop his indictment for corruption of public officials and graft due to alleged lack of jurisdiction of the anti-graft court on private individuals and prescription of the crimes charged.

In a decision released yesterday, the First Division of the SC instead affirmed the rulings of the First Division of the Sandiganbayan in 2005 that junked Disini’s motion to quash the two cases involving the questionable awarding of the BNPP contract to US firms Burns and Roe and Westinghouse Electrical Corp. and him receiving commission for the deal he allegedly arranged as middleman.

In his petition before the SC, Disini argued that the Sandiganbayan should not proceed with the separate cases since it supposedly has no jurisdiction over private individuals.

But the high court did not agree.

“The Sandiganbayan has exclusive original jurisdiction over the criminal action involving petitioner notwithstanding that he is a private individual considering that this criminal prosecution is intimately related to the recovery of ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses, their immediate family, subordinates and close associates,” stated the unanimous ruling penned by Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin.

Disini also argued that he could no longer be prosecuted since the alleged crimes had been extinguished by prescription provided by law.

But the SC held that the prescriptive period did not run from 1974, the time when the contracts for the BNPP project were awarded to Burns and Roe and Westinghouse.

“Although the criminal cases were the offshoot of the sequestration case to recover ill-gotten wealth, the connivance and conspiracy among the public officials involved and the beneficiaries of the favors illegally extended rendered it similarly well-nigh impossible for the State, as the aggrieved party, to have known of the commission of the crimes charged prior to the EDSA revolution in 1986,” the high court explained.

“Notwithstanding the highly publicized and widely known nature of the BNPP, the unlawful acts or transactions were discovered only through the PCGG (Presidential Commission on Good Government)’s exhaustive investigation, resulting in the filing of the civil case against Disini,” it added.

Records showed that the two cases for Corruption of Public Officials, penalized under Article 212 in relation to Article 210 of the Revised Penal Code, and violation of Section 4(a) of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act were filed against Disini on June 30, 2004.