Ex-PDEA agent Morales sentenced to 4 months in jail for perjury

Former Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) investigation agent Jonathan Morales testifies during the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs’ resumption of its investigation on PDEA’s leaked documents on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (File photo from NOY MORCOSO / INQUIRER.net)

MANILA, Philippines — A Pampanga Court has found former Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) investigation agent Jonathan Morales guilty of perjury for lying under oath and giving false testimonies against two suspects linked to illegal drugs in 2011.

In an 11-page decision dated August 7, but made public on Thursday, the San Fernando, Pampanga Municipal Trial Court Branch 4 found Morales “guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime of perjury.”

Morales was a witness during the Senate investigation of the alleged leaked PDEA documents.

READ: Former PDEA chief: Ex-agent Morales known as ‘STL or storytelling liar’

Morales has been sentenced to four months imprisonment and a fine of P1,000.

According to the decision, Morales “willfully and unlawfully gave false testimonies under oath” against the two suspects, Albert Co Chua and Aaron Tan.

It added that the former PDEA official told the court that the suspects “were liable for selling, delivering, transporting or distributing drugs, knowing fully well that the said testimony is false.”

However, Morales withdrew and retracted his affidavit against the two suspects after a few months, claiming that he was “under duress and only coerced by his superior” and that “his conscience could not take that someone innocent shall be punished for something they did not do.”

In response, the court said that “the element of duress should be based on real, imminent or reasonable fear for one’s life or limb and should not be speculative, fanciful or remote fear.”

In May this year, Morales linked President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and actress Maricel Soriano to illegal drugs.

During one of the Senate hearings on the leaked PDEA operational documents, Senator Jinggoy Estrada revealed that Morales also has an estafa case pending before the Metropolitan Trial Court (METC) in Pasig City and a slight physical injuries case pending before Pasig City METC Branch 72.