MANILA, Philippines - For President Aquino, it’s the conviction and imprisonment of senators being tried for plunder that will define the success of his administration, and not just the filing of cases against them or their detention.
In an interview in his office on Wednesday with Bombo Radyo, Aquino said only a guilty verdict on Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. can prove that his administration’s anti-corruption efforts are paying off.
The three senators, whose names he did not mention in the interview, were being tried for plunder and graft at the Sandiganbayan in connection with the multibillion-peso pork barrel scam allegedly masterminded by businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.
Aquino said he believes the cases against the senators are airtight, especially since investigators have found a pattern in the alleged anomalous disbursement of their pork barrel funds, then officially called Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF.
Aquino ran and overwhelmingly won in the 2010 presidential elections on the platform of anti-corruption and good governance.
He said it is not the habit of his administration to file defective cases that the courts would eventually dismiss.
This is why, he said, the Department of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman are working hand in hand to ensure that only airtight cases are filed in court.
At the Sandiganbayan, magistrates of the First Division denied yesterday requests that the anti-graft court subpoena the bank documents and records of pork barrel fund scam whistle-blowers led by Benhur Luy.
The First Division, which is handling the plunder case against Revilla, also quashed the subpoenas earlier issued against officials of five banks.
“The subpoena should be quashed, not only for lack of specifics on what documents are sought to be produced but most importantly, the production of these documents will violate the basic state policy of confidentiality of bank deposits,” the Sandiganbayan said, citing provisions of the Bank Secrecy Law.
“The witnesses are not the accused in this case,” Associate Justices Efren dela Cruz, Rodolfo Ponferrada, and Rafael Lagos said in their six-page decision.
They agreed with ombudsman lawyers that the financial records of Luy and his fellow whistle-blowers may only be examined in the context of the P224.5 million plunder case against Revilla, his former chief of staff Richard Cambe and Napoles.
“This brings us to the actuality that the monies deposited with the subpoenaed banks are not the subject matter of the action or litigation,” the Sandiganbayan said.
The court said the bank accounts of the whistle-blowers “have no direct or at least intimate connection to the amount supposedly plundered by accused Revilla and Cambe.”
The magistrates also stressed that the “magnitude and intricacies” of the PDAF scam, including the public attention it has attracted, do not give the anti-graft court a blanket authority to indiscriminately seize every opportunity presented to unmask perpetrators without regard to the rights of others. It was Napoles, through her lawyer Stephen David, who had asked for the issuance of subpoenas on the bank accounts and records of Luy and his fellow whistle-blowers in the pork barrel fund scam.
David wanted to use the bank records to destroy the credibility of the whistle-blowers. – With Michael Punongbayan