The Justice department will just refile before a proper court the criminal case it filed against officials of WellMed Dialysis and Laboratory Center Corp. after it was dismissed by a Quezon City regional trial court.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said the dismissal of the complaint for estafa against the WellMed officials by Judge Janet Abergos-Samar of the Quezon City RTC Branch 219 was not a major setback since his department could “simply refile with the proper court.”
“No harm done,” Guevarra said.
He made his statement even as an official said some P3 billion worth of overstocked medicines remained at the Health department, down from P18.4 billion in 2018.
Health Undersecretary Enrique Domingo earlier said 80 percent of the medicine had been distributed to communities as state auditors flagged his department for accumulating P18.4 billion worth of drugs and medicines in 2018, or P16 billion in 2017 and P11.3 billion in 2016.
“We got a report from the start of the month, right now that’s down to about P3 billion worth. [Most of the drugs] have been distributed, especially the ones near expiry or expiring,” Domingo told ANC’s Early Edition.
Guevarra said even before the Quezon City court came out with its ruling, they were about to withdraw the case from the court because the National Bureau of Investigation was unable to produce the additional evidence.
“We were actually withdrawing the information filed with the RTC, but were overtaken by the court’s order,” he said.
“The DOJ was awaiting additional evidence from the NBI. When it was not forthcoming, we decided to withdraw the information in the meantime. But before we could withdraw it, the court issued the order of dismissal, without prejudice to refiling.”
On Monday, the Quezon City court dismissed the criminal cases against the WellMed officials for lack of jurisdiction.
In granting the motion of the WellMed officials led by Brian Sy to quash the charges for 17 counts of estafa and falsification of public documents, the court ruled that the complaint should have been filed before a metropolitan trial court.
Nonetheless, the lower court said the dismissal of the criminal complaint had nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the accused Brian Sy, whistleblowers Leizel de Leon and Edwin Roberto and other unidentified defendants.
The defendants allegedly defrauded PhilHealth of claims ranging from P5,200 to P39,000 per case.
De Leon and Roberto were placed under the DOJ’s witness protection program after they tagged Sy in the PhilHealth mess.