Cabinet man, mom get 10 yrs for graft

GUILTY SENTENCE Nereus Acosta, presidential adviser for environmental protection and ex-Bukidnon province representative, was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison by the Sandiganbayan for allocating P5.5million of his pork barrel to a family-owned foundation. JOAN BONDOC

A MEMBER of President Aquino’s Cabinet has been found guilty of graft and could go to prison, a development that may help blunt criticisms that the administration’s anticorruption campaign is targeting only those who do not belong to the ruling party.

“While I don’t want to use [his] name, this is proof that justice under the daang matuwid (straight path) is nonpartisan,” Liberal Party (LP) standard-bearer Mar Roxas said, in reference to the President’s governance slogan.

Nereus Acosta, presidential adviser for environmental protection, was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison by the Sandiganbayan Monday for allocating P5.5 million of his pork barrel to a foundation owned by his family when he was a Bukidnon representative in 2006.

The antigraft court’s fourth division also found his mother, former Mayor Socorro Acosta of Manolo Fortich town, guilty beyond reasonable doubt of violating Republic Act No. 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

The Acostas have also been barred perpetually from working in government.

Appeal

Acosta said he and his mother would submit to the rule of law and appeal the decision.

A general manager of the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), Acosta is the first former lawmaker convicted of graft in connection with the misuse of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), a pork barrel or public funds for pet projects of lawmakers that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in November 2013.

Considered the cash cow of unscrupulous lawmakers, the pork barrel system came to the fore in 2013 when whistle-blower Benhur Luy exposed the P10-billion scam allegedly cooked up by businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

A number of former and incumbent lawmakers, including Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla, are detained and are standing trial for pocketing millions of pesos of their PDAF that was channeled to bogus foundations set up by Napoles.

A member of the LP, Acosta  served as representative of the first congressional district of Bukidnon province for three consecutive terms—from 1998 to 2007.

Mother and son were accompanied by their lawyers when the guilty verdict was read to them by clerk of court Jeoffre Zapata.

Nothing political

In an interview after the promulgation of the case, the LLDA official said there was nothing political in the ruling issued by the court.

“This is a 15-year-old case. The trial went on for seven years … . This has nothing to do with whether you’re an LP [member or with] being in the official family of the President,” Acosta told reporters.

He was found guilty for one count of graft, but was absolved in three other offenses. His mother was convicted for two of the four counts of graft.

Mother and son were earlier acquitted by the antigraft tribunal’s Fifth Division in a related perjury case filed by the Office of the Ombudsman.

Puzzled

Acosta said he was puzzled by the Sandiganbayan’s verdict after it dismissed other connected cases.

“While we are grateful for my acquittal in the two graft cases in the Fourth Division and the acquittal of the perjury case in the Fifth Division, we are saddened and perplexed with the decision of this one case connected with the above mentioned cases,” he said.

Law violated

In handing down the guilty verdict, the court said Ombudsman prosecutors were able to prove that Acosta broke the law when he assigned a portion of his PDAF as financial assistance to Bukidnon Vegetable Producers Cooperative (BVPC), which Socorro headed as its chair.

The antigraft tribunal also noted that his father, Juan Acosta, and aunt, Ma. Nemia Bornidor, were among those who “formed and organized” the cooperative as shown by its articles of cooperation.

“The court has carefully studied the evidence on record. The court finds that [the] accused … indeed committed a violation [of the law]… as charged in the information,” the court said in a resolution.

It said “no reason or justification was shown why the BVPC was chosen to be the recipient” of the P5.5 million in financial aid from Acosta’s pork barrel, which was coursed through the municipal government of Manolo Fortich.

“The court, therefore, holds that the circumstances … clearly indicate that the accused … both acted with manifest partiality and evident bad faith, if not with gross inexcusable negligence, in jointly working for the transfer and release to BVPC of the amount,” it ruled.

The court added that Socorro had “financial or pecuniary interest, indirect if not direct, in the transaction involving the release [of the fund] through the municipality of Manolo Fortich.”

The decision was written by Associate Justice Oscar Herrera and was concurred in by Associate Justices Jose Hernandez and Alex Quiroz. With a report from Gil Cabacungan