House panel wants prosecutor in Garcia deal axed

The House committee on justice is planning to recommend to President Benigno Aquino III the removal of Special Prosecutor Wendell Sulit from her office for heading the team who entered into the controversial plea bargain deal with former military comptroller Carlos Garcia, an alleged plunderer. Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas, head of the House justice panel, said the committee reached a consensus on Tuesday morning to recommend Sulit’s removal from office on grounds of “betrayal of public trust." “Part of our partial recommendations is to ask the President to remove Special Prosecutor Sulit... Nasa poder ng Pangulo ang pagtanggal sa kanya based on the Ombudsman Act," he told reporters on Tuesday afternoon. GMA News tried to contact Sulit for her comment, but her secretary said she was at a meeting and was unavailable. Subsequent calls on her telephone were left unanswered. At a press conference last Jan. 13, Sulit denied that there were irregularities in the plea bargain deal. “Wala kaming binulsa… Ginagawa kaming napakarumi rito sa Office of the Ombudsman… Strategy yan pero always nasa isip namin yung kapakanan ng gobyerno hindi yung bulsa namin," she said in the briefing. (We didn’t pocket anything. We are being painted black here at the Office of the Ombudsman… We followed a stratagem but always, what was foremost in our minds was the government’s interest, not our own pockets.) According to Section 8 of the Ombudsman Act (Republic Act 6770), “a deputy or the special prosecutor, may be removed from office by the President for any of the grounds provided for the removal of the Ombudsman, and after due process." Tupas added that the committee will also recommend the filing of “gross negligence" charges against assistant prosecutors involved in the plea bargain deal, which he described as “highly irregular and erroneous." Last year, special prosecutors from the Office of the Ombudsman entered into a plea bargain deal with Garcia, who pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of direct bribery and money laundering instead of the crime of plunder – a non-bailable offense. As a result of the deal, Garcia was allowed to post bail of P60,000 and to temporarily walk out of jail in December last year. The former military comptroller was also allowed to return only P135 million out of the P303 million he allegedly stole from the military coffers. — LBG/KBK, GMA News