Former PCGG chair Camilo Sabio. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/RAFFY LERMA
For failure to settle P350,000 in cash advances that he made more than a decade ago, former Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) Chair Camilo Sabio was ordered by the antigraft court to return the money and pay a P1,000 fine.
In a 13-page decision promulgated on Friday, the Sandiganbayan’s Second Division found Sabio guilty of failing to pay back cash advances of P250,000 and P100,000 which he made separately in 2008.
Sabio, 85, headed the PCGG —an agency tasked with recovering the ill-gotten wealth of the family and cronies of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the father of the President—from 2005 to 2010.
The court decision cited Article 218 of the Revised Penal Code, which states: “Any public officer, whether in the service or separated therefrom by resignation or any other cause, who is required by law or regulation to render account … and who fails to do so for a period of two months after such accounts should be rendered shall be punished by prision correccional in its minimum period [of six months], or by a fine ranging from 200 to 6,000 pesos, or both.”
Although Sabio was merely fined P1,000, the decision penned by Associate Justice Oscar Herrera Jr. said he would be penalized with “subsidiary imprisonment” if he fails to pay that fine.
According to case records, Sabio’s own agency wrote him twice—the first time, even before his term ended in 2010—demanding that he return the money.
But it was only in 2019, or after eleven years, that he was charged at the Sandiganbayan with failure to render accounts.
Earlier cases
He then pleaded not guilty, saying he never received any demand letter from the commission. Without such a letter, the charge against him had no basis, he argued.
The Sandiganbayan, however, rejected the argument, citing several Supreme Court decisions.
There were earlier cases filed against Sabio which the graft court decided in his favor.
In 2016, he was cleared in a P10.35-milllion malversation case involving remittances from a property firm of a Marcos crony that had been sequestered by the PCGG. Later that year, he was absolved in another case stemming from unsettled cash advances, that time amounting to P1.6 million.
Earlier this month, the Sandiganbayan’s Fifth Division dismissed another case against him involving a P600,000 cash advance made in 2009.