Part Five
Supreme Court dismissed 28 behest loans cases
THE Presidential Commission on Good Government behest loan panel, like the rest of the PCGG, would be notable for its lack of success. In early-December 1998, the Supreme Court upheld the Ombudsman’s dismissal of a case filed by the PCGG against Alice L. Reyes, in connection with a loan given to Vital Agro Industrial Corp. when Reyes was still chief executive of the Development Bank of the Philippines.
The Supreme Court had similarly dismissed petitions by the PCGG regarding behest loans on June 29, August 26 and November 11, all in 1998. At least 28 behest loan cases have been dismissed or dropped, leaving 12 still pending as of December 1998. Andrew Ammuyutan, chief legal counsel of the Ombudsman, explained that cases were junked because of “insufficient evidence presented by the PCGG that the loans were behest.”
Some fingers must have gotten sticky in the groping for the Marcos gold and the cronies’ treasures. On August 20, 1988, Vice President Salvador Laurel was compelled to denounce the Aquino government as a “den of thieves.” Two days later, a more damning story came out in Newsweek:
“Once the spearhead of Aquino’s anticorruption battle, the PCGG has become a symbol of its disarray. One PCGG commissioner was forced to acknowledge to a Senate committee last week that he didn’t know what had become of more than a dozen airplanes seized by the commission. Last week former solicitor general Francisco Chavez, who went on leave last month after clashing with the PCGG, accused the commission of “ineptness, incompetence and corruption” in the management of 286 firms it has seized and in the handling of its cases against Marcos-era cronies.
“At least two of Aquino’s appointees, including current chairman Adolfo Azcuna, turned out to belong to law firms that once represented companies they are supposed to be investigating. Five PCGG agents face graft charges, and 13 more are under investigation by the commission itself and a government prosecutor.
“Last week the nation’s House of Representatives moved to cancel the immunity from civil legal action that PCGG members and employees now enjoy. The commission’s follies have provided ample grist for Aquino’s opponents. ‘I don’t think the sequestration of crony-owned companies was intended to provide employment and a source of income for the cronies and friends of the new [administration],’ opposition Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile said last week.”
In any event, Cory inconvenienced the Marcoses and some Marcos associates much more successfully than her hounds were able to recover “ill-gotten wealth” in the volumes expected. Was harassing the Marcoses a victory in itself?
The Supreme Court was not awed by the PCGG’s sweeping powers. In 1987 the Court reminded the PCGG that freeze and sequestration orders were merely provincial remedies that must be followed within the constitutionally prescribed period by judicial proceedings. On April 15, 1988, the Court restrained the PCGG from exercising the voting rights represented by sequestered shares of stock, in the case Bulletin Publishing v. PCGG (GR 79126).
By November 21, 1991, the number of firms freed from PCGG sequestration by the Sandiganbayan had topped 180 of the 350 firms sequestered since 1986. On this day, the PCGG was ordered to desequester within 30 days 97 companies and other assets of Roberto S. Benedicto and 17 of his close associates. The Benedicto assets included the Philippine Daily Express and its presses, three television stations (BBC-2, RPN-9 and IBC-13), six radio stations, an aircraft, 11 ships, the Republic Planters Bank, a school and 31 sugar plantations.
The PCGG could have settled for P1 billion worth of assets that Benedicto had earlier offered in exchange for the dropping of all civil and criminal cases against him. But some unidentified officials—perhaps coveting everything—opposed the compromise deal. And so Benedicto went to the Sandiganbayan, which agreed with him that the PCGG had violated the two-commissioners-as-signatories rule. Although given a reprieve by the anti-graft court, Benedicto remained willing to enter into a deal that would put a permanent end to his ordeals.
Long after Cory had left the presidency, the Supreme Court would still be rebuking the PCGG for its quickness in sequestering assets and slowness in properly disposing of sequestered assets. Ruling on July 31, 1998, in Republic/PCGG v. Sandiganbayan, et al. (GR 119292), the high tribunal held that the burden of proving whether the assets sequestered were ill-gotten properly belongs to the PCGG.
The court held that:
“Beyond such custodial powers, the PCGG must hurdle its more important task: that of proving the ill-gotten nature of the sequestered assets and of causing their reversion or reconveyance to the people.
The tragedy was that the media, the same biased media that prejudged the Marcoses as thieves, just ignored the findings of the court and the foreign investigative bodies that found the Marcoses innocent.
To be continued
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.