Former ambassador Benjamin ‘Kokoy’ Romualdez and his wife Juliette on Tuesday contested the Office of the Ombudsman’s move to seize his $5.193 million Swiss bank accounts, which are now held in escrow by the Philippine National Bank.
In their motion filed before the Sandiganabayan, the Romualdez couple said the Ombudsman’s petition to forfeit their bank accounts should be dismissed because it was brought to court without first allowing them to file a motion for reconsideration, and because no preliminary investigation was conducted.
Petitions for forfeiture should also be filed by the Office of the Solicitor General, not the Ombudsman, they further argued.
Romualdez is a former Leyte governor and brother of former First Lady Imelda Marcos, whose assets along with that of her husband, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, are the subject of government cases to get them back for being ill-gotten wealth.
According to the Romualdez couple, the allegations in the case state that the Swiss accounts were acquired before Feb. 25, 1986. Because of this, the Ombudsman has no authority to conduct a preliminary investigation or a similar probe on the matter.
They said the Ombudsman could only initiate cases to recover ill-gotten wealth amassed after Feb. 25, 1986, as stated in the law creating the agency. It is the city or provincial fiscal who has the authority to conduct a preliminary investigation in their case, they added.
According to them, the Ombudsman ignored the issue about their lack of jurisdiction on the case when it approved the resolution for the filing of the forfeiture case.
They further contended that the Ombudsman filed the petition even though it was the Solicitor General that should have done it.
The Romualdez couple also opposed the Ombudsman’s request for the issuance if a writ of attachment against the bank accounts to secure the government’s claim.
According to them, the Swiss bank accounts are in escrow with the PNB and are under a freeze order which prevents them from disposing of it. Because of this, there was no need for the writ of preliminary attachment, they added.
In filing the petition to forfeit the Swiss bank accounts, the Ombudsman had said that the Romualdez couple could not have earned $5.193 million when he was Leyte governor and ambassador.