Estrada lawyer plunder-accused’s choice

Former state prosecutor Jose Flaminiano appears to be the lawyer of choice of officials accused of stealing public funds.

Flaminiano’s newest client is Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who has retained him to fight the plunder charges filed against the latter in the Office of the Ombudsman.

The charges arose from the government’s investigation of allegations that Estrada and Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Ramon Revilla Jr. connived with Janet Lim-Napoles to pocket hundreds of millions of pesos from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel.

According to Marina Sula, a former employee of Napoles and a state witness in the plunder case, Flaminiano was also the lawyer of Napoles in a suit the military brought against her and her relatives in 2002 for not delivering Kevlar helmets that the Philippine Marines had ordered from her for P3.8 million.

In a text message to the Inquirer, Sula said on Saturday that she remembered Flaminiano because he stopped her from testifying in the Kevlar case.

“I cannot forget it, because he told me that I could not take the witness stand because I did not know how to lie,” Sula said.

Sula said Napoles wanted her to testify in her defense in the Kevlar case.

Napoles was acquitted by the Sandiganbayan in 2010 for lack of evidence, but her mother, the late Magdalena Lim, brother Reynald Lim and his wife, Anna, and her secretary Evelyn de Leon were found guilty, Sula said.

Lim, now a fugitive with a P5-million prize on his head in the serious illegal detention case brought by pork barrel scam witness Benhur Luy, was never jailed, Sula said.

De Leon is also among those accused of plunder in the pork barrel scam, as she was president of a dummy nongovernment organization allegedly used by Napoles to siphon off billions from the PDAF into her bank accounts.

Flaminiano was also one of the lawyers of former President Joseph Estrada during his impeachment trial in the Senate in 2000.

The trial was not completed, as Estrada, accused of plunder, left office under pressure from massive street demonstrations. The Sandiganbayan found him guilty of plunder, but then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pardoned him, saving him from life imprisonment.