Dismissed QC prosecutor found guilty of bribery

The Sandiganbayan has found a former Quezon City prosecutor guilty of direct bribery for receiving P103,000 from a complainant in 2014 in exchange for a favorable resolution.

In a decision dated Sept. 7, the court’s Fifth Division sentenced dismissed Assistant City Prosecutor Edgar Navales to a maximum prison term of two years and four months and ordered him to pay a fine of P200,000.

The court took note of Navales’ admission that he received money from Reynaldo de Leon, who had filed a car theft case that was pending in the assistant prosecutor’s office.

The court also gave weight to the printouts of text messages between the two men. In one of the messages, Navales told De Leon about an “emissary” and asked for more money for a certain “Chief Meynard”—apparently namedropping Chief Prosecutor Maynard Bautista.

‘Quid pro quo’

“There is no room for any doubt as to the exact nature of the transaction between the accused and the complainant and it is quid pro quo, money in exchange for a resolution slanted toward the latter,” read the decision penned by Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Rafael Lagos.

The court did not buy Navales’ claim that he only borrowed the amount from De Leon.

“It is simply implausible that of all the financing that the accused could secure, he innocently chooses to get one from a person who has a case pending before him. Any person [in his] right mind would comprehend that the money solicited from the complainant includes the promise of a favorable resolution of his case in return,” the court said.

In 2016, the Office of the Ombudsman ordered Navales’ dismissal from government service for grave misconduct over the same case. He was also banned from holding public office and fined an amount equivalent to his yearly salary.

Then Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales also ordered the filing of a direct bribery case against Navales in the Sandiganbayan.