THE SANDIGANBAYAN has rejected the attempt of government lawyers to recover almost P1 billion in coco levy funds from business tycoon Danding Cojuangco, the Marcos family and their associates.
In a decision dated Sept. 10 but released only Thursday, the antigraft court’s Second Division threw out the motion for partial summary judgment which the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) filed to demand the initial payment of P958,800,000 in coco levy funds allegedly held by Cojuangco and his fellow respondents.
Besides Cojuangco, also indicted in the civil suit are former First Lady Imelda Marcos who is now a representative of Ilocos Norte, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, Enrique Cojuangco, Marcos Cojuangco, Rafael Abello and the late Zamboanga City Mayor Maria Clara Lobregat.
The Cojuangco-owned Agricultural Investors Inc. (AII) was also named in the petition which the OSG filed on Nov. 4, 2013.
The Supreme Court has declared that the coco levy funds, which were collected from small coconut farmers through a levy that the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos imposed, belonged to the public.
Cojuangco, a known Marcos crony, was appointed by the dictator to administer the levy.
Control of coco funds
The government has alleged that Cojuangco and his associates were able to take control the coco levy funds and used them to buy coconut trading firms, set up coconut oil mills and export firms, buy the United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) and shares of stock of San Miguel Corp. (SMC). Many of these assets were placed in the name of holding companies under the Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) owned by six oil mills. The assets were held by the UCPB as the administrator of the CIIF.
The government, through the Presidential Commission on Good Government, has filed multiple cases in the Sandiganbayan involving shares in the name of Cojuangco corporations with the CIIF, the SMC and various businesses allegedly acquired using the levy funds.
On Dec. 14, 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that the coconut levy funds were public funds but left it to the Sandiganbayan to decide who owned the assets acquired with the funds.
In its Sept. 10 decision involving the demand for the return of P958,800,000 paid to the Cojuangco-owned AII, the court said the legal issues raised by the government lawyers “still remain contentious and have to be proven in a full-blown trial.”
Serving no other purpose
Issuing a partial summary judgment on the civil case would only “serve no other purpose than to establish certain facts… but not entail all issues raised relative to all of them,” it said.
“The court so holds that while… Cojuangco, Enrile and Lobregat were established to be the directors and officers of UCPB, the facts do not show with specificity what gross negligence or bad faith was committed by them in directing the affairs of the corporation,” it added.
Associate Justice Teresita Diaz-Baldos, the Second Division chair, penned the decision which was concurred in by Associate Justices Napoleon Inoturan and Ma. Cristina Cornejo.