Jinggoy Estrada seeks repeat of 2000 bail

A “REPEAT performance” from the Sandiganbayan will see him home for Christmas, or at least that is what detained Sen. Jinggoy Estrada hopes.

Estrada is confident that the antigraft court would grant his bail petition, in the same way it did in an earlier plunder case against him in 2000 when he was granted temporary liberty.

After nearly 18 months, the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division has concluded the hearings on Estrada’s bail petition against the more recent graft and plunder charges brought against him in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam.

The prosecution and the defense yesterday formally ended their presentation of evidence during the two-hour oral summation, with both panels claiming that they had done enough to prove their respective positions.

“That is what I have been praying for ever since,” Estrada told reporters when asked if he was hoping to be with his family this Christmas. “I just hope and pray that the court will grant my motion to post bail.”

“If you base it on the performance of the prosecution and the defense, it is very clear that the prosecution failed miserably to present any evidence,” he added.

Estrada said he was expecting the anti-graft court to rule the same way it did in the plunder case brought against him over the “jueteng” scandal in 2000, because there was “no strong evidence presented against me.”

“I think this is another repeat performance (of the Sandiganbayan). The prosecution has no evidence. They are all hearsay,” he said.

But Ombudsman Director Ma. Christina Batacan said the testimonies of primary whistle-blower Benhur Luy and other state witnesses would be enough to prove that Estrada had benefited from the elaborate pork barrel-siphoning scheme set up by the alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.

In addition, Batacan said, the report of the Commission on Audit and the financial investigation conducted by the Anti-Money Laundering Council supported the statements of the whistle-blowers as to how Estrada allegedly received a total of P183,793,750 in kickbacks from 2004 to 2012 from Napoles.

From 2004 to 2009, she said the senator allocated P361 million of his Priority Development Assistance Fund, the official name of the congressional pork barrel, to the Technology Resource Center, National Agribusiness Corp. and the National Livelihood Development Corp. as implementing agencies.

“The prosecution has proven that the guilt of the accused is strong. Therefore, his petition for bail should be denied,” Batacan told the court.

On questioning by Associate Justice Roland Jurado, the Fifth Division chair, Batacan admitted that save for socialite Ruby Tuason, none of the whistle-blowers had seen Estrada personally receiving the alleged kickbacks from Napoles.

She also disclosed that while Tuason had claimed to have delivered P19 million in cash to Estrada, Luy’s records showed that Tuason only received P9 million from Estrada’s pork barrel allotments.