The high court issued an eight-page extended minute resolution denying the petition of Robert John Lim that assailed the Ombudsman’s resolution on March 28, 2014 and two joint orders on June 24, 2018 recommending the filing of plunder and graft charges against him and several others.
The SC held that Lim “miserably failed to show” that the Ombudsman had gravely abused its discretion in issuing the rulings, stressing that his arguments had been addressed in a 2016 decision on the petition of Richard
Cambe.
Cambe was the chief of staff of former senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. Both were charged with plunder and graft by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2014, along with Napoles and her employees, Lim and John Raymund de Asis, and Budget Undersecretary Mario Relampagos in connection with the PDAF scam.
“We are inclined to do no less in the present case. We recognise that the acts in Cambe, which related to the illegal pillaging of public funds sourced from the PDAF of then Senator Ramon Revilla Jr, occurred within the same timeline as the acts in the present case,” the SC ruled.
The SC noted that in the Cambe case, “as correctly pointed out by the Ombudsman,” whistleblowers Benhur Luy and Merlina Sunas identified Lim as among the staff members of Napoles who prepared and delivered the kickbacks intended for Revilla.
It said it was proper for the Ombudsman to consider his failure to file a counter-affidavit as a waiver of his right to file the same, which meant that allegations in the complaint remained uncontroverted.
The high court also argued that it was “premature” of Lim to resort to the extraordinary remedy of certiorari “as there are remedies before the Sandiganbayan that are still available to Lim at this point.”
In the meantime, the Sandiganbayan First Division has asked the SC for an additional 30 days before handing out a verdict on the plunder and graft charges against Revilla.
In a letter dated Nov 5, 2018 and addressed to Acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio, Sandiganbayan Justices Efren de la Cruz, Geraldine Faith Econg and Edgardo Caldona, requested the date of promulgation be moved from Nov 9, 2018 to Dec 7, 2018, so that they could review the voluminous documentary evidence submitted by the parties during the trial.
The SC has already affirmed the “preliminary attachment” issued by the Sandiganbayan over the assets of Revilla as there was “clearly a prima facie factual foundation for the attachment of his monies and properties.”
It used as basis the testimonies that Cambe received on behalf of Revilla the amount of P103mn in return for the senator’s endorsement of the non-government organisations of Napoles as recipients of Revilla’s pork barrel.
