Former President Ferdinand Marcos, his wife Imelda Romualdez and several of their associates are off the hook in the P267-million ill-gotten wealth case at the Sandiganbayan as the anti-graft court dismissed the government’s appeal on the original decision.
The anti-graft court affirmed its October 2019 decision dumping the ill-gotten-wealth case against the Marcos couple, Fe Roa Gimenez and husband Ignacio and Vilma Bautista and husband Gregorio, among others, following its findings that the prosecution’s evidence “did not comply with the best-evidence rule.”
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In an eight-page resolution, the Sandiganbayan said the evidence, collected by the Presidential Commission on Good Government, “did not rise to the level of a public record stature even if these are certified as true copies by the PCGG.”
“The court is not persuaded [by the government]. As held by the court in the presently assailed Resolution, the pieces of evidence that were collected by the PCGG in the course of its investigation of the Marcoses” ill-gotten wealth remain as private documents and do not become part of public records. What becomes public are not the private documents themselves but rather only the recording thereof in the PCGG,” the Sandiganbayan ruled.
“Not having attained the status of certified public record either under Rules of Court, the photocopies that the Republic [government] submitted amounts to a violation of the best-evidence rule that requires that the original document must be produced whenever its contents are the subject of inquiry.”
The anti-graft court said the PCGG failed to show proof that the original copies of the photocopied documents presented as evidence had been lost, destroyed or could not be produced in court.
The government, the Sandiganbayan said, “did not present sufficient evidence that the Gimenez couple accumulated ill-gotten wealth because the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth of Fe Gimenez and the sequestration or temporary seizure of their assets by the PCGG that were offered as evidence by the prosecution do not conclude that the said wealth were unlawfully acquired.”
“PCGG’s power to sequester alleged ill-gotten wealth properties is a provisional remedy given to the plaintiff [government] in order that the latter may attach the property of the adverse party as security for the satisfaction of any judgment that may be subsequently rendered in his favor. The fact that their assets were sequestered does not automatically mean that the same are already ill-gotten wealth,” the Sandiganbayan said.
The Gimenez couple was accused of amassing wealth beyond the declared total net income of only P955,273.71 from 1981 to 1985 in Civil Case 0007.
The PCGG also claimed, in the same case, that the Bautista couple also acquired assets grossly and manifestly disproportionate to their salaries or lawful income; Fe Gimenez and Vilma Bautista siphoned millions of dollars of government fund into several accounts in foreign countries and served as conduits of the Marcoses in the purchase of New York properties such as the Crown Building, the Lindenmere Estate, expensive works of art; the accused acted as dummies of the Marcoses in several corporations; the accused obtained construction contracts via corporations organized by them (e.g., New City Builders Inc. and thus undertook such projects as the construction of the University of Life Sports Complex and dining hall, and those for the National Manpower Corporation, Human Settlements Commission, GSIS, Maharlika Livelihood.
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