Ombudsman asks SC: Nullify Sandiganbayan ruling on Chingkoe plunder raps

The Supreme Court should nullify a Sandiganbayan ruling that dismissed the P74-million plunder case filed against former Department of Finance officials and executives of a textile company led by Faustino Chingkoe as they were supposedly involved in tax credit fraud, the Office of the Ombudsman said Wednesday. The Sandiganbayan resolution, issued by its First Division on March 9, 2011, claimed the Ombudsman’s special prosecutors failed to establish its argument that those who were accused received money from the private respondents. Thus, no probable cause may be attributed against them. The Chingkoe couple, Faustino and his wife Gloria, conspired with public officials in the use of government-issued tax credit certificates assigned to family-owned Filstar Textile Industrial Corp. to settle its obligations, according to the Ombudsman’s Office. But the certificates were transferred to the oil firms Petron Corp. and Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. to pay for their fuel excise tax, the Ombudsman’s Office also claimed. Special prosecutor Wendell Barreras-Sulit said in a 48-page review that the anti-graft court misinterpreted Section 2 of Republic Act 7080, or the Plunder Law, by raising the lack of probable cause to be on par with the failure to establish that the public officials acquired ill-gotten wealth in relation to the Filstar Textile tax credit certificates. The other respondents in the suit, apart from the anti-graft court and Faustino Chingkoe, were former Finance Undersecretary Antonio Belicena, who was also the One-Stop Shop Inter-Agency Tax Credit and Duty Drawback Center executive director, as well as his deputy Uldarico Andatun Jr., Finance Department reviewer Asuncion Magdaet, and tax specialist Rowena Malonzo. The private respondents were Filstar Textile representative Catalina Aranas Bautista, corporate secretary Grace Chingkoe, and Gloria Chingkoe. The law cited “Petitioner is of the view that evidence of receipt by the public officer of the ill-gotten wealth or of proceeds of the same is satisfied by evidence of receipt of said wealth by his co-conspirators. Section 2 of RA 7080 requires merely that the public officer participate in the act of amassing, acquiring or accumulating ill-gotten wealth. The intent of the provision is to penalize the pillage regardless of who among the conspirators ultimately benefited from it," Barreras-Sulit said. “[T]he bottom line is that, regardless of whether or not the conspiring public officer benefited from the pillage, for as long as the ill-gotten wealth of at least P50-million amassed by the accused private individual came from the government coffer or resulted in the government’s losses, there is a crime of plunder," the special prosecutor said. Court records showed that the Ombudsman’s Office accused the Filstar Textile and the Chingkoes of defrauding the government of P73.76 million equivalent to 28 tax credit certificates that the government issued to the company from 1995 to 1997, based on what the Ombudsman Office claimed were fraudulent documents. Incorporated in 1989, Filstar Textile makes, imports and exports yarns, threads, laces and other fabrics. — VS/JV, GMA News