The Supreme Court has cleared a former Sandiganbayan justice of impropriety, specifically on the allegations that he had an illicit affair with a Caloocan City clerk of court whose name appeared as the co-owner of a property he purchased in Las Piñas City.
In a decision penned by Associate Justice Jose Mendoza, the SC dismissed for lack of merit the administrative complaint filed against retired Justice Associate Justice Roland Jurado for allegedly having an illicit affair with Caloocan City clerk of court Mona Lisa Buencamino, and for allegedly amassing unexplained wealth.
Jurado was the Sandiganbayan magistrate who ordered the arrest of former senator Jinggoy Estrada in 2015 for his alleged involvement in misuse of his pork barrel funds as lawmaker.
The high court also exonerated Jurado of the allegation that he had amassed unexplained wealth and for his failure to declare all his real estate properties in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.
“The court finds the complaint bereft of merit… [T]here is no prima facie evidence showing that either Justice Jurado or Buencamino has unlawfully accumulated wealth,” the SC ruled.
“For the same reason, the charge of immorality should likewise be dismissed. There is no evidence on record that would show that Justice Jurado and Buencamino had an immoral relationship,” the high court said.
The SC dismissed the initial findings of an eight-member panel created by the Office of the Court Administrator in 2010 to look into the allegations against them.
The investigating panel also discovered that Jurado did not declare several of his properties in his SALN, while Buencamino’s own SALN had “inconsistencies.”
It also concluded that Jurado’s net worth “appeared to have considerably widened” after he was appointed to the anti-graft court in October 2003. It also found out that they co-owned a property in Las Piñas, which they eventually admitted.
However, the SC held that their admission was not enough to prove that they were having an affair as Jurado and Buencamino were able to “sufficiently” explain that they acquired the property after they entered into a business venture.
Jurado explained that his relationship with Buencamino was “purely professional.”
The respondents argued that it was not the first time that they were accused of engaging in an immoral relationship and that they had ill-gotten wealth.
Jurado and Buencamino said the National Bureau of Investigation had already absolved them of the same allegations and that the Office of the Ombudsman had also junked a similar complaint against her.
The SC also accepted Jurado’s justification that he did not put several properties in his SALN since he had already sold them.