On Target
This lawyer should be disbarred
By Ramon Tulfo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:31:00 01/08/2009
Filed Under: Local authorities
Felisberto Verano, lawyer of the “Alabang Boys,” admitted preparing the release order for his clients and using the stationery of the Department of Justice to do it.
He thought he could pull a fast one on Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez.
Gonzalez may be a little cranky at times because of his age, but he has still full use of his faculties.
The old man didn’t sign the release order because it was a drug case. He wanted to review the case first.
While vacationing in Hong Kong, Gonzalez, according to my sources at the Department of Justice (DOJ), blew his top when he read about the controversy over the release order.
Some aides of the justice secretary in the past had put one over him.
He has since learned a lesson not to trust anybody in the department when it comes to big cases, which could be possible sources of graft.
Gonzalez should by now know that the DOJ, like Malacañang, is a snake pit.
* * *
What Verano did was very unethical and unprofessional.
He and his cohort in the DOJ, Undersecretary Ricardo Blancaflor, should be disbarred.
But before he faces disbarment proceedings, Blancaflor should first be kicked out of the DOJ.
* * *
No matter how strong the denial Verano and the DOJ people who handled the drug case of the Alabang Boys have issued, the public will not believe that big money did not change hands.
Why would Verano risk his profession preparing the release order for his clients using a DOJ letterhead unless he had the blessing of some DOJ people?
What he did made him liable for disbarment.
The bigger the risk, the bigger the amount involved. That’s simple logic.
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State Prosecutor John Resado, who dismissed the drug cases against the Alabang Boys, is known in the DOJ as the “Dismissal Prosecutor.”
Resado has dismissed many big-time drug cases.
It appears that this guy has no scruples at all. He admitted being a student of Verano at the Far Eastern University College of Law.
He should have inhibited himself from the drug cases where his former professor is the lawyer.
* * *
I covered the Department of Justice, then called the Ministry of Justice, for a few months in 1977 for the now defunct Times Journal.
Back then, people at the DOJ, under Minister Vicente Abad Santos, were much more decent and incorruptible.
I recall that at that time, one of the close aides of Abad Santos was a lady lawyer, Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
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