Gov’t, Revilla lawyers quibble over cost of ‘truckload’ of evidence

MANILA, Philippines–Defense and prosecution lawyers of Sen. Bong Revilla for his plunder case over the pork barrel scam quibbled on Thursday about the delays and cost of reproducing the “truckload” of evidence for which the Office of the Ombudsman was charging P5 per page.

Such moments of comic relief characterized the first cross-examination of principal whistle-blower Benhur Luy, the star witness in the pork plunder case against Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Revilla.

All the defense lawyers—Joel Bodegon for Revilla, Stephen David for Janet Lim-Napoles and Remigio Miguel Ancheta for Revilla’s senior staff member Richard Cambe—grumbled about how long it was taking for the prosecution to provide them with copies of evidence, from memorandums of agreement between the implementing agencies and Napoles nongovernment organizations (NGOs) to special allotment release order disbursing pork funds to the NGOs to ledgers and vouchers of this money flow prepared by Luy.

David complained that he had yet to obtain a full copy of Luy’s files while Bodegon and Ancheta claimed that it was only two days ago that they received the initial batch of Luy’s evidence.

Blaming defense team

Acting Chief Special Prosecutor Joefferson Toribio blamed the defense team for the delays in getting copies of the prosecution’s evidence because the defense team did not give money to its messenger to cover the hefty photocopy bill.

The Sandiganbayan’s First Division chair, Efren de la Cruz, drew more laughter from the audience when he said, in deadpan fashion, that the court could not advance money to pay for the photocopying bill.

All case documents in the Ombudsman are allowed to be photocopied only within its Quezon City headquarters and Toribio said each page cost P5, or 10 times the average cost in commercial areas.

A source from the prosecution team said the defense lawyers were just using this as a poor excuse, as it was their responsibility to make sure that the documents were duplicated on time. “We don’t have to spoon-feed them everything,” the source said.

The two camps sniped at each other in court.

Toribio protested against David and Ancheta standing too close to Luy on the witness chair, as he urged the magistrates to order the two to “keep a safe distance” away from Luy. But the court denied his request and David and Ancheta stayed 30 centimeters away from Luy.

Toribio also disliked David’s finger snapping to keep count of how long it took Luy to answer his questions delving into the details of his ledger.

David and Bodegon noted that Luy apparently lost his memory after being so sharp in his initial testimony the previous week.