Sandigan ruling on Enrile plunder, graft cases over PDAF out in May –Cabotaje-Tang

The Sandiganbayan Third Division is expected to issue by May its verdict on the P172-million plunder and 15 counts of graft charges against chief presidential legal counsel and former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, his former chief-of-staff Jessica “Gigi” Reyes, businesswoman Janet Napoles, among others.

“It is scheduled for promulgation, actually we issued a previous resolution, I think it is slated in the month of May,” Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang told reporters Wednesday at the sidelines of an art exhibit of persons deprived of liberty hosted by the anti-graft court.

The cases were on the alleged misuse of Enrile’s discretionary fund or Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). 

“Hopefully, it will push through as scheduled,” Tang added. 

Reyes earlier told the anti-graft court in a hearing this year that she does not have any authority on Enrile when it comes to PDAF transactions.

Reyes made the response when asked by government prosecutors why she did not ask the then Senate leader to retract his confirmation of her signature in letters endorsing entities owned by Napoles as implementing agencies of Enrile’s PDAF.

The confirmation of Reyes’ signatures was stated in Enrile’s 2012 letter to Commission on Audit (COA) confirming the authenticity of the signatures of the members of his staff, including Reyes, in PDAF documents involving seven endorsement letters from 2004 to 2010.

“I did not [ask Enrile to retract] and I do not have the authority to tell Senator Enrile to do anything,” Reyes said during the cross examination of state prosecutor Jennifer Agustin-Se.

Reyes also told the court that Enrile’s 2012 confirmation letter to COA of his staff members’ signatures did not pass through her even though she was the chief-of-staff.

She said it was deputy chief of staff Jose Antonio Evangelista who made Enrile sign the 2012 confirmation letter to COA because Reyes and Enrile were then busy with the ongoing impeachment trial of then Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Prosecutor Se replied by saying, “Maam, you are a lawyer and you know these letters would implicate you so much. But despite that, you did not take action to at least correct the matter with COA?”

Reyes said that she was confident that COA will eventually confront her with the 2012 confirmation letter since Enrile has ordered Evangelista to make corrections on the said letter.

This instruction, Reyes said, happened in a meeting between herself, Enrile, Evangelista and another deputy chief of staff for administration.

Reyes then said she later found such confidence was misplaced.

“I did not ask him (Enrile) to write a letter to COA because Senator Enrile, in the meeting, said to Jade (Evangelista) to write a letter to COA to explain the circumstances. I believed that we will be given an opportunity to be confronted with the letters with the correction,” Reyes said.

“I believed wrongly because COA never asked to verify these signatures,” she added.

The prosecutor also asked Reyes if she was aware that the 2013 letter that Evangelista sent to COA, a document which Reyes’ camp repeatedly argued to be a correction of Enrile’s 2012 confirmation letter, only stated that Reyes had forged signatures in “some” documents and that Evangelista only identified two documents which supposedly contain Reyes’ forged signatures.

“Are you aware that in Annex F of his [2013 COA ] letter, he only identified only two documents which contain your alleged forged signatures?” Se said.

Reyes replied, “I am not aware.”

Likewise, Reyes said during cross examination that she was not able to confirm with Evangelista if the 2013 letter to COA stated that the “some” documents purportedly containing her forged signatures included the seven endorsement letters to Napoles-run entities.

“No, I was not able to confirm that,” Reyes added.—AOL, GMA Integrated News