Sandiganbayan junks Mitra’s P3M graft case over prosecution delays

Games and Amusement Board Chairman Abraham Kahlil Mitra (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO)

MANILA — The Sandiganbayan has thrown out the P3-million graft case against Games and Amusement Board Chairman Abraham Kahlil Mitra in connection with the fertilizer fund scam, citing prosecution delays that violated his right to speedy proceedings.

The case would no longer head to trial. In an 11-page resolution, the anti-graft court’s First Division granted the motion to quash filed and adopted by Mitra and four other defendants in the alleged misuse of funds earmarked for farm inputs in 2004.

The case involves the alleged conspiracy to misuse the funds meant for Mitra’s constituents when he was representative of Palawan’s second district in 2004.

Prosecutors accused Mitra of endorsing GabayMasa Development Foundation, Inc., as the partner non-government organization to implement the farm inputs project. Officials hastily released the funds to GabayMasa even as the NGO lacked the qualifications required by Commission on Audit rules and failed to submit reportorial requirements, the charge sheet claimed

The Sandiganbayan quashed the charge sheet because the Office of the Ombudsman failed to “resolve the complaint with reasonable dispatch as dictated by law and jurisprudence.”

The court said the Ombudsman took five and a half years from April 18, 2011 to wrap up the preliminary investigation stage and file the case before the court on Sept. 23 this year.

For the court, this alone was already enough to show “inordinate, oppressive, and unreasonable delay” on the Ombudsman’s part.

This count did not even take into account the fact-finding investigation to build up a case for the 2011 criminal complaint. The court considered fact-finding to have begun in 2006, when the Ombudsman specifically created Task Force Abono to look into the alleged diversion of the fertilizer fund in the months before the May 2004 elections.

The court made no distinction between the fact-finding and preliminary investigation stages as far as the right to speedy disposition of cases was concerned.

“It has been settled that the guarantee of speedy disposition would be defeated or rendered inutile if the hair-splitting distinction between a fact-finding investigation and preliminary investigation is accepted,” the resolution read.

The court noted that the Ombudsman “placed the accused in a tactical disadvantage,” as the availability of defense witnesses and documentary evidence would be affected by the 12 years that passed before the case reached the court.

Justice Efren de la Cruz wrote the resolution, with the concurrence of Justices Michael Frederick Musngi and Reynaldo Cruz.

Besides Mitra, the court also let the following DA Regional Field Office IV officials off the hook: executive director Dennis Araullo, legislative coordinator Lucille Odejar, and regional accountant Raymundo Enriquez Braganza.

Likewise, the case against GabayMasa officer Margie Tajon Luz was dismissed.

The cases against some of the accused remain. These are DA regional technical directors Gregorio Sangalang and Balagtas Torres, and GabayMasa officers Concha Inay Indica, Ma. Cristina Jimeno Vizcarra, Caridad Tajon, Melencio Punzalan, and Rodolfo Luz.

Mitra served as district representative for three consecutive terms from 2001 to 2010. He then became governor for a three-year term marred by controversies and an aborted bid for a recall election. On July 15, President Duterte appointed him the chairman of GAB.

The Ombudsman has charged a number of local officials for the alleged P728-million fertilizer fund scam, where funds released by the Department of Agriculture shortly before the May 2004 presidential elections were found to have been used to purchase overpriced fertilizers. That year, then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won reelection in a hotly contested race marred by alleged irregularities.  SFM