MANILA, Philippines—Marcos crony Herminio Disini has again petitioned the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court to dismiss the criminal cases filed against him in connection with the $18-million bribe that he allegedly solicited for the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.

Disini, a golfing buddy of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, said in a new motion filed Thursday that the Ombudsman’s Office had refused to give him access to the preliminary investigation records of the cases against him.

The court last month dismissed a petition from Disini asking the court to suspend his trial for six months because of supposedly failing health.

The court said suspending the proceedings would be against the mandatory time period as the pre-trial conference for the case has been pending since February 2005 because of the numerous motions filed by Disini’s lawyers.

In his latest petition, Disini said the court could not have acquired jurisdiction over the cases against him—Criminal Cases 28001 and 28002—because the records of the preliminary investigation were never submitted to the court.

Disini also asked the Sandiganbayan First Division to remove from the cases Raymundo Julio Olaguer, acting director of the Office of the Special Prosecutor, for alleged “bias and partiality.”

The prosecutors alleged that Disini, who reportedly fled to Europe after Marcos was ousted in 1986, used his connections with the dictator to ensure that the contract to build the nuclear plant was awarded to US firms Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Burns and Roe.

He is alleged to have “requested and received” $1 million from Burns and Roe and $17 million from Westinghouse for facilitating the contract.

Other cases dismissed

The original cost of the 620-megawatt nuclear plant was $500 million, but this ballooned to $2.3 billion by the time it was completed in 1984, or four times the original price.

In another Marcos crony case, the Supreme Court has upheld its April 2009 resolution dismissing graft charges against Benjamin Romuladez, the brother of former first lady Imelda Marcos, for allegedly holding simultaneously two government positions and receiving salaries from both from 1976 to 1986.

In an en banc resolution, the high court denied with finality a motion for reconsideration filed by state prosecutors against its April 2009 dismissal of the charges against Romualdez.

It said that no substantial arguments were presented to warrant the reversal of the ruling.

Romualdez was charged with using his influence to be appointed ambassador to China, Saudi Arabia and the United States while serving as Leyte governor, and for receiving compensation for both government positions.

The high court ruled that the case had already prescribed since Romualdez was charged only on Nov. 5, 2001, and the time from the alleged commission of the offense to the filing of the cases was beyond the 15-year prescriptive period. Edson C. Tandoc Jr. and Norman Bordadora