THE ARRESTED Raul Desembrana (left) is brought to the NBI headquarters following the entrapment operation in Quezon City on Friday.
MANILA, Philippines—An P 80,000 bribe — euphemistically known as an “SOP” among legal circles—was all it took to entrap a Quezon City prosecutor who allegedly asked for the amount in exchange for the dismissal of a case.
Raul Desembrana, 58, took the bait in an entrapment operation conducted by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) at a restaurant inside Quezon Memorial Circle on Friday.
The NBI operation against Desembrana stemmed from a complaint filed in the Department of Justice by doctor Alex Montes, his son Connor and their lawyer Ephraim Cortez of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL).
DESEMBRANA. Prosecutor in hot water
According to the NUPL, Montes, who is one of the so-called Morong 43, reported that Desembrana had asked Cortez to shell out P80,000 as SOP in exchange for the dismissal of a complaint against his clients.
The Monteses were being sued for unjust vexation by Reuben Espartinez, a retired military chaplain belonging to the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, according to the NBI.
The NBI agents caught Desembrana in the act of receiving marked money from Cortez in a morning meeting set up at the restaurant as part of the NBI trap.
“We already declined but he persisted in asking for the SOP and even instructed our lawyer to draft the favorable resolution,” Montes told the Inquirer in an interview at the NBI headquarters following the arrest.
“We know that by reporting him there could be repercussions,” Cortez said. “But we have to expose this as part of an obligation to fight corruption.”
Desembrana only said “no comment” when approached for an interview.
An NBI report on the operation showed that Desembrana agreed to meet Cortez at the restaurant around 11:20 a.m.
Upon arrival, Cortez said, “he (the prosecutor) immediately asked: Pwede ko na ba makuha yung…? (Can I have the…?)”
Senior NBI agent Peter Lugay said Desembrana initially resisted arrest and tried to put up a fight when approached by the agents, but eventually calmed down as he was being read his rights.
Desembrana is a former member of the Public Attorney’s Office, where he worked for 10 years, and is now on his seventh year as assistant city prosecutor, the NBI said.
He would be charged with direct bribery in the Office of the Ombudsman, Lugay said.
Morong 43 was the name given to a group of 43 community health workers arrested in 2010 in Morong, Rizal province, on allegations that they were members or supporters of the communist New People’s Army. With a report from Tetch Torres-Tupas, Inquirer.net