San Miguel Corp. chairman Eduardo Cojuangco INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
The Office of the Ombudsman has declined to pursue the plunder case filed by a farmers’ group against San Miguel Corp. chairman Eduardo Cojuangco over the coco levy funds, saying the issues raised by the complaint had already been addressed by the Supreme Court.
In a reply to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), Aileen Maqueda, administrative officer of the Field Investigation Office, said the Ombudsman has decided to close and terminate the inquiry regarding the 2003 plunder complaint filed against Cojuangco.
“The judgment of the Supreme Court is conclusive and cannot be contradicted by an inferior court. It bars the reopening of the case in subsequent litigation under the doctrine that no one should be vexed twice for the same cause,” Maqueda said in a disposition form dated February 14.
Thus, any fact-finding probe on the issues would be moot and academic, the Ombudsman said in a decision made eight years after the complaint was filed.
The KMP said the disposition was vague and did not specify which Supreme Court decision was being referred to.
It said the Ombudsman’s response was mind-boggling as it came just weeks after the high court ruled that a 24 percent of SMC stock worth P1.6 billion had been bought with coco levy funds. The high court has also ruled that the coco levy funds were public funds.
Hence, there was a case for systematic plunder against Cojuangco, the KMP said.
“The most recent decision of the Supreme Court on the recovery of the ill-gotten wealth shares affirmed that the 24 percent block of SMC shares was bought using the coconut levy funds which has been established as public funds,” said KMP deputy secretary general Willy Marbella.
“In fact, the latest decision of the Supreme Court provided the Ombudsman a very strong moral, political, and legal ammunition to indict Cojuangco and his cohorts for plunder of the coco levy funds,” Marbella said.
The KMP denounced the Ombudsman for refusing to investigate Cojuangco.
“The decision clearly shows that the Office of the Ombudsman, from being a protector of the Arroyos, now turned out to be a protector of plunderers and the President’s relatives,” Marbella said.
The government and coconut farmers groups have been trying vainly to claim Cojuangco’s 20 percent block of SMC shares, claiming that the businessman, President Aquino’s uncle and a known crony of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, had bought the shares using coconut levy funds.
The 20 percent block was part of a 47 percent block of SMC shares that the government sequestered after the first Edsa People Power Revolution in 1986, for being part of the ill-gotten wealth of Marcos and his associates.
Originally posted at 10:55 pm | Thursday, March 08, 2012