Verzosa asks court to defer graft case

Former PNP chief Jesus Verzosa. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Former Philippine  National Police (PNP) chief Jesus Verzosa has asked the Sandiganbayan to defer the issuance of a warrant and suspend proceedings against him in connection with a graft case over the PNP’s purchase of two secondhand helicopters.

Verzosa, replying to the prosecutors’ comment, argued that the proceedings against him in the Sandiganbayan should be suspended in view of a petition for a certiorari he filed in May and was now pending with the Supreme Court.

He reiterated that the anti-graft court should apply the “principle of judicial courtesy.”

In the same reply, Verzosa also asked the Sandiganbayan to dismiss the case against him for lack of probable cause.

The Ombudsman in early June filed graft charges against former First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo and 20 PNP officials, led by Verzosa, and Hilario de Vera, president of Manila Aerospace Products Trading (Maptra), a PNP supplier, over the sale of two helicopters.

Arroyo allegedly sold the two Raven I helicopters, passed off as brand-new, to the PNP.  The two were among the five helicopters that Arroyo allegedly bought from an American firm for the use of his wife, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, for her campaign in the 2004 presidential elections.