Aquino should have Napoles et al. convicted fast

Frankly Speaking
By Frank Wenceslao

If there’s a basis better than former Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment and dismissal from office for President Aquino to be remembered a success, it’s convicting Janet Lim Napoles and her co-conspirators in Congress past and present before he leaves office in June 2016.

Any other claim of success by his dream beaters, e.g. the country’s economic performance will fizzle out when Aquino leaves Malacañang and his successor takes over. It isn’t too late though to preserve his legacy and be remembered as the first President to have minimized government corruption and uprooted its principal cause. That’s fundamentally honest government officials and employees succumb to temptation and get involved in conspiracies to rig public biddings in order that favored bidders that pay big kickbacks or commissions from multibillion-peso procurement of goods and services by all means because perpetrators often walk by buying their freedom with dirty money they looted.

Aquino knows of a cooperative framework (“coop”) being formed by the Philippine Anticorruption Movement USA, Inc. (Pamusa) that will enable the Ombudsman and PCGG to extend the reach of their legal actions against corruption to the US and other foreign jurisdictions under the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) and other recent international cooperation agreements against corruption (ICAACs) in the search and recovery of ill-gotten wealth from the proceeds of corruption of current and former public officials, their immediate family members and close associates or the private businessmen and individuals that colluded with them for unlawful financial gains.

Justice Secretary Leila De Lima

It’s now up to Secretary de Lima to act fast on who she’ll appoint as the DOJ’s liaison rep with the USDOJ that will effectuate compliance of both the Philippine and US governments with their mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) in connection with the prevention, investigation, and prosecution of all criminal offenses hardly known to government lawyers and has not been invoked in fighting corruption since its signing in Nov. 1994. The MLAT actually provides that either party can request the other of “(a) taking testimony or statement of persons; “(b) providing documents, records, and items of evidence; (c) serving documents; (d) locating or identifying persons of items; (e) transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; (f) executing requests for searches and seizures; (g) assisting in proceedings related to forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and (h) any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the Requested State.”

Janet Lim Napoles

Napoles is made-to-order for the MLAT for she has become like an octopus whose tentacles have reached every nook and corner of the public treasury to divert government resources to her pocket and co-conspirators including foreign aid and pork barrel for local economies. With the evidence being compiled against her, the MLAT will enable to sue Napoles, investigated, prosecuted, brought to trial and most likely convicted and sentenced to jail under the provisions of the treaty.

It’s also been brought to me the case of Marlene Garcia-Esperat. On March 24, 2005, a hired assassin gunned her down while having dinner with her family at home in Tacurong City. In 2003, Esperat was the Department of Agriculture (DA) Resident Ombudsman for Central Mindanao, had filed charges against DA officials on a P432-M fertilizer scam. However, it’s revealed in the ensuing investigation Napoles was probably involved in the even bigger P728-M fertilizer fund scam, which has made former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante who’s charged of misappropriating the fertilizer fund and diverting this to GMA’s 2004 presidential campaign.

It appears that in the liquidation of the fund, Napoles got the biggest order for liquid fertilizer. But since the fund was actually disbursed and divided among “small farmers” that included those owning lands and planting rice where the Quezon City Hall and Quezon Memorial Park are situated, it doesn’t need a rocket scientist to conclude that most of the liquid fertilizer delivered by Napoles might’ve been indeed “liquid” but of the quality delivered by the Manila Waterworks & Sewerage System (MWSS).

Since Napoles has added to her portfolio the biggest scam investigative reporters have uncovered – the P10-B scam that involved the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or pork barrel allotted to a number of former and current members of Congress.

Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales

For instance, with the evidence firming up against Napoles and co-conspirators, Ombudsman Carpio-Morales will surely file a complaint against Napoles for violating several laws and against current and former government officials who conspired with her for unlawful acquisition of properties beyond statistical probability of their earning capacities which the BIR can probe through forensic audit and the Anti-Money Laundering Council for foreign exchange remittances of unexplained source. Almost surely each respondent will try to save himself/herself by turning state witnesses against Napoles.

With overwhelming evidence the Ombudsman has against her, a new prosecutorial discretion can be resorted to by confronting Napoles and threatening her either admit her crimes, name her co-conspirators, return the public funds she has usurped both from the fertilizer and pork barrels, or else the Ombudsman will consolidate the charges to plunder punishable by life imprisonment or death. She needs extra protection though because she might get a dose of her own medicine when some “big fishes” may feel threatened by her admissions.

With the same evidence and what Pamusa can dig up in the US to add for the lawsuit(s) to be filed in America against Napoles and family members for violation of the US Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by acquiring real estate and other properties in the US using money unlawfully earned in the Philippines, money laundering, conspiracy, falsification of official documents, etc. In the end, Napoles’ US properties will be subject to confiscation to be returned to the Philippine government.

At the same time, Bolante can also be sued in the US to recover his share of the fertilizer fund Pamusa has confirmed his wife brought to the US when Bolante came to the US in 2006 not knowing the Senate asked the US Embassy in Manila to cancel his US visa for defying the Senate’s subpoena three times in connection with the investigation of the fertilizer scam. It may turn out that Bolante would also sing an “aria” about who asked him to divert the fertilizer fund to GMA’s election campaign and other uses that are truly criminal.