The Sandiganbayan Fifth Division believes that the prosecution’s evidence in the plunder case of former Sen. Jose “Jinggoy” E. Estrada and businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles is sufficient enough to reach a guilty verdict.
The anti-graft court in a resolution denied their demurrer to evidence – which is an act made by the defense arguing that the prosecution’s evidence is weak or insufficient to reach a conviction.
Estrada, Napoles, his deputy chief of staff Pauline Therese Mary C. Labayen, and John Raymund de Asis were slapped with a violation of Section 2 of Republic Act 7080, An Act Defining and Penalizing the Crime of Plunder, otherwise known as plunder, because they reportedly pocketed P183,793,750 from Estrada’s Priority Development Assistance Fund by endorsing Napoles’ fake non-government organizations in 2004.
Estrada and Napoles filed their demurrers as a bid to have their case dismissed.
Estrada argued that the evidence against him is weak and “unfounded,” given the fact that the anti-graft court entitled him to post bail back in 2017.
Napoles said the prosecution failed to establish that each accused, by their individual acts, agreed to participate in the so-called scam.
She added that there was no main plunderer identified, and the Supreme Court even pronounced that this failure to do so is “fatal to the cause of the State for violating the rights of each accused to be informed of the charges against them.”
But the anti-graft court believed otherwise. “Ultimately, the prosecution was able to establish that Napoles and Estrada agreed to funnel the PDAF allocation of Estrada through the bogus NGOs… of Napoles, for a percentage commission ranging from 40 to 60 percent of the PDAF,” the resolution stated. (Czarina Nicole Ong-Ki)
