MANILA, Philippines—A businessman implicated in a bribery scandal at the Court of Appeals (CA) Thursday challenged the Department of Justice’s authority to investigate him, claiming he had already been pre-judged by Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez.

The businessman, Francis de Borja, did not appear before a high-level DoJ (Department of Justice) committee which opened the investigation Thursday, instead choosing to file a motion questioning the legal authority of two Justice undersecretaries to participate in a preliminary investigation.

The panel is composed of Justice Undersecretaries Ernesto Pineda and Fidel Exconde Jr. and Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño.

Bribery scandal

The Supreme Court had ordered the DoJ to investigate De Borja for possible criminal liability, one of the steps it took regarding the bribery scandal surrounding the Meralco-Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) case.

The high court had dismissed CA Associate Justice Vicente Roxas, suspended for two months Justice Jose Sabio, reprimanded Presiding Justice Conrado Vazquez and admonished Justice Myrna Dimaranan-Vidal for varying degrees of lapses in handling the Meralco-GSIS dispute over the inclusion of proxy votes.

Sabio had claimed that De Borja, allegedly acting on behalf of Meralco, offered him P10 million to inhibit himself from the GSIS-Meralco case. The ruling handed down by Roxas favored Meralco.

Calling attention to the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure (Rule 112 Section 2), De Borja said the investigation should be conducted by the Makati City Prosecutors Office since the alleged bribery took place in Makati City.

“A Justice undersecretary, in spite of his exalted position in the DoJ, is not actually a government prosecutor within the contemplation of law… which created the so-called National Prosecution Service under the DoJ,” he said.

Suspicious motives

De Borja further claimed that his constitutional right to appeal would be violated because the two undersecretaries would likely end up reviewing the case.

The businessman added he was suspicious of the DoJ’s motives for creating a special investigating panel when the alleged offense (bribery) “for all the hoopla attending its filing is nonetheless a light offense cognizable by the inferior courts.”

De Borja said he was “not unaware of the past media pronouncements made by the Secretary of Justice himself, which clearly and undeniably constitute a pre-judgment of putative guilt.”

Lawyer Vicente Chuidian, who represented Court of Appeals Associate Justice Jose Sabio, said the motion filed by De Borja was simply a delaying tactic.

The panel gave Chuidian 10 days to comment, and De Borja’s camp five days after that to reply.