The Sandiganbayan Fifth Division has denied the appeal of detained businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles through a memorandum asking for her acquittal in a plunder case, among other cases.
In a resolution promulgated on July 4, 2023, the anti-graft court refused to admit Napoles’ memorandum in her plunder case involving former APEC party-list representative Edgar Valdez by technicality as the memorandum of Napoles was filed on March 31, 2023, beyond the
February 19, 2023 deadline.
A memorandum is the summation of arguments presented by the defense and the prosecution and is filed after they presented witnesses and pieces of evidence.
“Lamentably, Napoles failed to justify the belated filing of her memorandum,” the court said in the resolution penned by Associate Justice Maria Theresa Mendoza-Arcega. Division Chairperson Rafael Lagos and Associate Justice Maryann Corpus-Mañalac concurred the decision.
Napoles and Valdez are facing plunder, as well as seven related graft cases, involving P57 million kic backs from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam.
Napoles’ lawyer asked the court to consider the testimony of Benhur Luy in the graft cases that the amounts supposedly given to Valdez as kickbacks did not come from PDAF.
Napoles’ lawyer also stated in the memorandum that the alleged kickbacks did not come from checks issued by the Department of Budget and Management.
“More so, she prayed for her acquittal from the crime of plunder for failure of the prosecution to prove her guilt beyond reasonable doubt,” the court noted.