After Abalos, Neri cleared in NBN deal

The Sandiganbayan has cleared a second accused in the graft case filed six years ago in connection with the Arroyo administration’s aborted $329-million National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with Chinese firm ZTE Corp. in 2007.

The antigraft court’s Fifth Division said it did not find enough evidence to show that Romulo Neri, former director general of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), gained from the allegedly overpriced contract.

“We find the evidence of the prosecution insufficient to sustain the charges or justify a verdict of guilty,” it said in a decision dated Sept. 9. It rapped the prosecution for its “failure to satisfactorily establish that (Neri) had financial or pecuniary interest, directly or indirectly, in the NBN-ZTE deal.”

In clearing Neri of criminal liability, the court granted his petition (demurrer to evidence) filed in September last year to dismiss the case based on the evidence the prosecution presented in court.

Neri insisted he was not part of the group that supposedly benefited from the botched deal.

He argued that even if it were true that former Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos offered to bribe him with P200 million, this was “actually rejected or was not accepted” based on the prosecution’s own evidence.

The Sandiganbayan can dismiss a case even without waiting for the side of the defense if the evidence of the prosecution is weak.

Neri’s acquittal came just four months after the Sandiganbayan Fourth Division acquitted Abalos of graft over the botched NBN-ZTE deal.

Failed to prove

The court said the prosecution failed to prove that he brokered the deal between the Philippine government and ZTE Corp. for a fee.

The court dismissed charges that Abalos bribed Neri P200 million and Amsterdam Holdings Inc. president Jose de Venecia III (son of then Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.) with $10 million to withdraw De Venecia’s bid to compete with ZTE Corp. for the NBN contract.

Then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and husband Jose Miguel Arroyo, who were implicated by whistle-blower Rodolfo Lozada in the corruption scandal, separately filed petitions in July in the court’s Fourth Division to dismiss the charges against them.

Due to the scandal raised in the Senate hearing, Arroyo in October 2007 scrapped the NBN-ZTE deal, which was supposed to interconnect government offices across the country through broadband technology.

Lozada, who served as Neri’s technical adviser, testified in the Senate that Abalos lobbied on behalf of ZTE in exchange for a $130-million commission.

He claimed that the final contract price of $329 million was higher by $67 million than his $262-million valuation for the planned National Broadband Network.

The Sandiganbayan Fourth Division recently found Lozada guilty of graft over another case involving a land deal when he was president of state-owned Philippine Forest Corp. in 2007 and 2008.