Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III on Wednesday slammed the decision of the Judicial and Bar Council to disqualify him from the shortlist of candidates for Ombudsman due to a pending criminal case filed against him.
He asked ANC why the JBC let him go through the process of being interviewed if a case had already been filed against him.
Bello was interviewed by the JBC last month after he applied to replace retiring Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, but was dropped from the list earlier this week due to the syndicated estafa case against him.
Under the JBC’s rules, an individual with a pending case before any court must be disqualified from being nominated to any judicial post or as Ombudsman or Deputy Ombudsman.
“If I had that case, why did you let me go through the process of being interviewed by you?” Bello told ANC.
He said the syndicated estafa case was filed in 2012 when he was allegedly chairman of the board of a certain corporation. But he claimed that Securities and Exchange Commission documents showed he was not even a member of the corporation’s board.
Bello, who is also facing another case of extortion filed before the Presidential Anti-Corruption commission, said he had no issue with the members of the JBC who disqualified him from the list to replace Carpio-Morales.
He did not discount politics as the reason behind his exclusion from the JBC list.
