Prosecutors mull legal action in bribery claims
Maguindanao massacre carnage site in Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town in Maguindanao. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—State prosecutors accused of taking bribes in the Maguindanao massacre case plan to take legal action against those behind the “absurd” and “unbelievable” charges, and are challenging the source of the notebook supposedly containing names of those paid off.
Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Richard Anthony Fadullon, former head of the prosecution panel, met with Justice Undersecretary Francisco Baraan III, currently the panel’s supervisor, on Friday afternoon to discuss their course of action in light of the allegations.
Fadullon’s name is on a list of people allegedly given bribes that was bared by a witness in a television news report earlier this week, while government witness Lakmodin Saliao accused Baraan of taking P20 million. Private prosecutor Nena Santos separately claimed that the Ampatuans, the principal suspects in the massacre, had paid off prosecutors some P300 million.
“We’re contemplating (legal action). You will know at the right time,” Fadullon said in an interview Friday.
“I even challenge the source to come out in the open and not hide behind the camera. I also challenge the network to bring out the entire notebook and not hide, not make it hazy. If they’re saying it is the right of the public to know, why hide it? Why be selective? Are you trying to hide something? To protect someone?” said the lawyer.
Fadullon, who left the prosecution panel on March 9, 2011, also said it was illogical for him to have been offered bribes as they were supposedly paid out months after he resigned from the case.
“Allegedly, I was given P5 million in May 2011 and P2 million in January 2012. My question is, the only reason I will be given money is for me to get out of the case. But I was out of the case as early as March 2011,” he said. “ Why would you still spend money on me when I’m already out?”
He found it unfair that he and other prosecutors were “being made to defend themselves.”
The bribery charges came out just days after Santos and fellow private prosecutor Prima Jesusa Quinsayas spoke out on July 31 about differences with state prosecutors over the plan to rest the state’s case against primary accused Andal Ampatuan Jr. and 27 others.
The so-called “first in, first out plan,” supported by other private prosecutors including Harry Roque, aims to reach a partial promulgation of the case before the end of President Benigno Aquino’s term in 2016. Court proceedings are expected to take a long time as a total 196 accused stand trial for the November 23, 2009 murder of 58 people, including journalists.
Several defense lawyers, including the Ampatuans’ lead counsel Sigfrid Fortun, have meanwhile withdrawn from the case for unclear reasons just as infighting among prosecutors worsened.
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima earlier ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to look into the bribery allegations. She expressed confidence that the bureau would exercise fairness in investigating even while the subjects are prosecutors themselves who belong to the same mother agency.
“Now the NBI is the premier investigative agency of government. Yes, it’s under DOJ, but it can be trusted to undertake and to do its job fairly, objectively and thoroughly. So, hopefully they (those behind the charges) will cooperate,” said De Lima in an interview Friday.
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