Incoming Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre III on Thursday vowed to investigate allegation of meddling of current officials of the Department of Justice in the last-minute reversal of decisions or the so-called “midnight resolutions” before the new administration takes office on June 30.
Aguirre stressed that he would not allow such activities.
However, Aguirre challenged the Filipino Alliance for Transparency and Empowerment (FATE) to substantiate their charges.
“We will find out who are those involved in such [illegal] activities. We will not tolerate them. But at the same time I call on the group that exposed this to show evidence since they have implicated top officials of DOJ,” Aguirre said, in a telephone interview.
According to him, he will create a team to coordinate with FATE to look into the allegation. Aguirre added he was willing to talk to the group.
Earlier, the FATE through its spokesperson Jo Perez claimed that Justice Secretary Emmanuel Caparas was “meddling” in various cases currently pending with the department by rewriting and reversing resolutions in order to favor certain parties.
Perez said the information they received had Caparas allegedly instructing his subordinates—undersecretaries and state prosecutors—to stop issuing resolutions by June 3.
She said the “rewritten rulings” were being “antedated” and being sold for “millions of pesos” to parties in the case, but Perez did not name the cases involved nor where and how they got their information.
Perez alleged that the resolutions are being sold from P5 million to P10 million and P20 million for big cases.
For his part, Caparas denied the accusation, describing it “amusing.”
“What they claim is all untrue as there are no meddling or midnight reversals and no instructions from me or from my office to anyone in the department to take leaves. I can only wonder who is or are behind that group,” Caparas said.
Caparas is set to vacate his post on June 30 less than six months after he assumed the top DOJ post when Malacanang appointed then Justice Secretary Benjamin Alfredo Caguioa to the Supreme Court after Associate Justice Martin Villarama retired.