Court issues order for arrest, bars travel of ex-Palawan gov

PUERTO PRINCESA City—The Sandiganbayan has ordered the arrest of former Palawan governor Joel T. Reyes and an official of the Provincial Mining Regulatory Board (PMRB) over a mining controversy in 2008.

The antigraft court’s third division, chaired by presiding Associate Justice Francisco H. Villaruz Jr., issued the arrest warrant on Aug. 24, along with a hold departure order against Reyes and PMRB head of secretariat Andronico Jara Baguyo.

The former governor has received a copy of the order and posted bail for P30,000 Thursday, according to Palawan Provincial Board member Rolando Bonoan, spokesperson of Reyes, in a phone interview.

The antigraft court’s order stemmed from a complaint lodged in 2008 by a certain Fernando Santos, a member of a Manila-based nongovernment organization, who accused Reyes and the PMRB of violating the small-scale mining law in connection with the mining operation of Platinum Group Metals Corp. (PGMC), a company that was allegedly given favors by Reyes and was eventually sanctioned by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for overextraction of minerals.

Case background

Reyes’ legal counsel, Ferdinand Topacio, claimed the case was already dismissed by the Sandiganbayan’s fifth division as early as Nov. 9, 2010 “but surprisingly the Ombudsman refiled the same using the same complainant, a certain Fernando Santos, and the same set of evidence.”

Topacio also claimed that Santos had already withdrawn the complaint prior to its dismissal. “This is just a minor matter and a result of some oversight also and perhaps a case of politics rearing its ugly head,” Topacio told Inquirer by phone on Thursday.

PGMC, a mining company that operated in Narra town on a mining permit issued by Reyes, was penalized by the DENR for exceeding the production quota set by the small-scale mining law. The PMRB, chaired by Reyes, had been criticized for allowing the company to exceed its production quota.

The complaint also accused Reyes of willfully violating the People’s Small-Scale Mining Act of 1991, which applies to small-mining operations that did not require heavy equipment, by issuing such to large-scale mining projects that wanted to avoid the more rigorous permit process in national government agencies under the DENR.

Extraction limit

Under the small-scale mining law, the provincial governor, acting as head of the local mining regulatory board, has the prerogative to issue small-scale mining permits which allow a permit holder to extract as much as 50,000 metric tons of ore every year.

The DENR in 2006 revoked the environmental clearance certificate of PGMC after determining that the company exceeded the 200,000 MT limit during its two-year operations.

The provincial government of Palawan later imposed a moratorium on all small-scale mining applications in Palawan, after then Environment Secretary Heherson Alvarez threatened to revoke the authority of local government units to issue small-scale mining permits for nickel operations.