Seventeen senators have signed a committee report recommending the filing of graft charges against dismissed Bureau of Corrections chief Nicanor Faeldon over the good conduct time allowance anomaly.
The Senate committees on justice, constitutional amendments, blue ribbon, and finance showed that Faeldon was liable for failing to follow the procedures and requirements of Department Order 953.
DO 953 provides that no high-risk convicts can be released without the approval of the Justice secretary.
However, during the Senate hearing on the controversial sale of the GCTA, Faeldon admitted that he did not seek the Justice secretary’s nod before signing the release order of heinous crime convicts, including former Calauan, Laguna, Mayor Antonio Sanchez.
“The Department Order 953 was practically not familiar with me. I was not even apprised of that department order by anybody in the Bureau of Corrections in my entire stay there,’’ said Senator Richard Gordon who wrote the 34-page report.
The alleged anomalous release and public outrage over the possible release of Sanchez, who was convicted for raping and murdering University of the Philippines Los Baños student Eileen Sarmenta and killing her companion, Allan Gomez, in the 1990s, prompted the Senate probe.
President Rodrigo Duterte eventually fired Faeldon who was earlier sacked as Customs commissioner.
Aside from Faeldon, the committees also found former officials of the BuCor liable for grave offenses and direct bribery.
They are Ramoncito Roque, chief of the documents and record section; Corrections Senior Inspector Benilda Bansil; and Corrections Officer Veronica Buño who were earlier ordered dismissed by the Office of the Ombudsman.
The report also indicated that the three were liable for “accepting money for the promise of the early release of prisoners.”
Also found to have committed abuse and bribery were officials of the New Bilibid Prison Hospital, including its head, Ermesto Tamayo, medical officer Ursicio Cenas and nursing attendant Meryl Benitez.
These officers were liable for malfeasance when they accepted money in exchange for inmates’ confinement at the NBP hospital.
Cenas has been accused of accepting money in exchange for medical records.