Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Friday said she would check if Court of Appeals Justice Danton Q. Bueser was a member of the special court division that issued the order for the AMLC to scrutinize Napoles’ bank accounts and the other division handling Napoles’ petition to overturn the Department of Justice resolution finding probable cause to charge her with serious illegal detention.
According to the COA special audit on congressional pork barrel releases from 2007 to 2009, Bueser, a former Laguna congressman, had allocated P9.6 million to the Philippine Environment and Economic Development Association and P9.8 million to the Aaron Foundation Philippines.
The two NGOs are included in the 82 NGOs that were recipients of congressional pork and which the COA report found to be dubious and questionable, although not among the 10 linked to Napoles.
Bueser, who was appointed to the appellate court in July 2009, denied that he had endorsed any of his pork barrel funds to the two NGOs and questioned the authenticity of his supposed signatures in the documents submitted by the two.