The Sandiganbayan acquitted Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile and his co-accused former Senate chief of staff Gigi Reyes and businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles in a P172.8-million plunder case related to the pork barrel scam in 2013.
The anti-graft court Sandiganbayan released the verdict on Friday, October 4, after more than ten years of trial. In a ruling, its Special Third Division said the prosecution failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The vote was 4-1, which required the Third Division to form a special division of five members. According to Sandiganbayan rules, all three regular division members must agree unanimously to issue a decision. If there’s a tie, two additional members are called in.
“I knew all along that I would be acquitted because we have not done anything in this case. I hope the people who filed those cases against us will examine their conscience,” Enrile told reporters after the anti-graft court released its ruling.
Enrile and Reyes were accused of conspiring with Napoles to amass more than P170 million worth of kickbacks from the former Senate president’s Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) through ghost non-governmental organizations that Napoles created more than 10 years ago.
Napoles, on the other hand, is currently serving a term for convictions linked to the pork barrel cases of several other lawmakers as well as for plunder in the Revilla case.
Reyes, who was Enrile’s chief of staff from 1995 to 2001 and from 2004 to 2010, also mentioned that she never signed any letter supporting NGOs as enforcing agencies of the former senator’s PDAF.
Earlier this year, Enrile said he already wanted the courts to decide on his plunder case.
“Let them decide,” Enrile said, adding that the case had been pending for over 10 years without substantial evidence presented against him. (TCSP)
