The Supreme Court has affirmed the findings of the Office of the Ombudsman holding former senator Jose “Jinggoy’ Estrada liable for plunder, in connection with his alleged involvement in the multi-billion peso pork barrel scam.
SC Public Information Office Chief Theodore Te said the magistrates reached the decision during their regular en banc session Tuesday.
“The Court voting 6-4, with four taking no part, upheld the Ombudsman’s finding of probable cause against petitioner Estrada,” Te said, in a media briefing.
However, the Court has yet to release its promulgated decision as well as the concurring opinion of the magistrates and those who dissented from the ruling.
Estrada was allowed by the Sandiganbayan, which is handling the cases against him, to post P1.33 million in bail for his temporary liberty in September last year.
Of the three former senators charged in connection with the pork barrel scam case, only Ramon Revilla Jr. remains in detention after the Supreme Court also allowed Juan Ponce Enrile to post bail in 2015.
Aside from plunder, Estrada also faces 11 counts of graft for allegedly pocketing some P183 million in kickbacks from his pork barrel allocations, which were coursed through bogus non-government organizations established by alleged pork barrel scam architect Janet Lim-Napoles.
The Supreme Court has laid down the reglementary period for the resolution of graft cases, which should start with the preliminary investigation phase in the Office of the Ombudsman.
During its en banc session, the SC voted 8-2 with four justices taking no part, to uphold the position of the Ombudsman that the reckoning period for the right to speedy trial does not start with the fact-finding investigation.
The Court has set the new guideline for judicial determination of when a case is considered to be suffering from inordinate delay, which is common ground for seeking dismissal of cases before the Sandiganbayan.
“The Court interpreted the reckoning period for the right to ‘speedy disposition of cases’ under Article III, Section 16 to start from the preliminary investigation of cases, and not before the preliminary investigation and not from the fact-finding stage,” Te said in a media briefing.
The SC ruling arose from a petition filed by former Sarangani provincial treasurer Cesar Cagang, who submitted for the Court’s resolution the same issue raised in the petition filed by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2016 that sought to revisit the inordinate delay doctrine.
An insider revealed that the ruling effectively revised the doctrine set by the Supreme Court in its 2014 decision that dismissed the $2-million extortion case against former Justice secretary Hernani Perez filed by former Manila congressman Mark Jimenez in 2001 due to inordinate delay by the Ombudsman.
The previous doctrine included the conduct of the fact-finding probe in the reckoning period for the resolution of cases.
The Ombudsman filed a petition before the Supreme Court seeking to revisit the old doctrine, which has been invoked in many motions by the accused to dismiss cases before the Sandiganbayan.