EDITORIAL - Another minnow convicted

A politician systematically steals millions, even billions, from national coffers over several years, through creative budgeting and kickbacks from government contracts. But he uses the loot to dispense patronage and buy voters’ favors, and keeps getting elected to key government positions, along with his relatives.

The immense stolen wealth allows him and his entire clan to get the best justice that money can buy, allowing them to get away with the looting and ensuring its continuation, with the tradition of thievery passed down to the next generations.

Other politicians are cleared of plunder and unexplained wealth due to “inordinate delay” in their prosecution, in a judicial system notorious for its glacial pace.

Meanwhile, a former teller at the Development Bank of the Philippines in Nueva Ecija is sentenced to eight years in prison. Her crime? “Gross inexcusable negligence” in allowing a customer to encash three checks totaling P9 million, which later bounced due to insufficiency of funds.

The Sandiganbayan’s First Division, in a decision promulgated on Jan. 14, upheld the 2017 ruling of the Cabanatuan City Regional Trial Court Branch 29, which convicted Argene Ortiz of graft for allowing the encashment of the checks worth P3 million each by Eliezer Tumangan.

Ortiz argued that encashment of checks was “mechanical, perfunctory and routinary” on her part, and that she had been made a scapegoat for irregularities in the DBP Cabanatuan branch. The RTC did not buy her story.

Tumangan jumped bail and remains at large. The P9 million has not been recovered. The court has ordered Ortiz to pay the amount as civil liability.

It’s unclear if Ortiz is also out on bail and may evade imprisonment until a final ruling is rendered in her case. Her sentence is already shorter than the period that it took for the Sandiganbayan to affirm the RTC ruling.

Every centavo taken illegally from public coffers must be accounted for, and it’s good to see someone facing punishment for the loss of P9 million in a government bank.

But it would be better if the judicial process had been much shorter. Litigation isn’t even over yet; Ortiz’s case is expected to go to the appeals court and perhaps the Supreme Court. Will it take another nine years before a final verdict is handed down?

And it would be best if much bigger fish would be found guilty and sentenced to prison, for amounts that are a thousand times greater than P9 million. In this country, unfortunately, the larger the amount looted, the greater the chance of getting away with thievery.