Coco levy case back to square one at Sandigan 24 yrs. after

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) on Tuesday asked the Sandiganbayan to reconsider its order to proceed to a full-blown trial to resolve the government’s claim for the restitution of P653.37 million in allegedly unlawful disbursements from coconut levy funds converted into bank deposits, as well as interests accrued while the case languished in courts for 24 years. The PCGG filed a motion for reconsideration as regards a resolution promulgated by the graft court’s Second Division on June 17 which junked the government’s motion seeking partial summary judgment. This means the government has to present evidence to prove its case all over again. In the motion obtained by reporters on Thursday, government lawyers are seeking return of P88.5 million paid by the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) as settlement for an anti-trust lawsuit filed by the United Coconut Oil Mills Inc. (Unicom) in the United States; P162.565 million in various donations and releases to projects of former First Lady Imelda Marcos from 1970 to 1986; and P402.304 million in “unearned income" of interest-free deposits of coco levy funds put in the United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB). In a ruling penned by Associate Justice Teresita V. Diaz-Baldos, the graft court held that contrary to the claim of the PCGG and the Office of the Solicitor-General (OSG), none of the defendants made an admission that money used to pay the settlement of the anti-trust lawsuit and given out as donation to programs of Mrs. Marcos had come from coconut levy funds. Coco levy funds, public funds or not? The Sandiganbayan has denied government’s claim that coconut levy funds have been declared by the courts with finality and conclusiveness as “public funds." “[T]he Supreme Court merely ruled that coconut levy funds are only prima facie public funds, and merely for the purpose of determining whether PCGG has the right to vote the sequestered shares, pending the final outcome of the cases before this Court," the Sandiganbayan explained. [See: Supreme Court upholds Danding on SMC shares] But the commission in charge of recovering ill-gotten wealth insists that sufficient evidence was on record to show that the disputed coconut levy funds deposited in UCPB are in fact public in nature and were used by the defendants for “irregular and unlawful disbursement." Named defendants in the case when it was filed in July 1987 were Unicom and the then boards of directors of UCPB and PCA, including businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., Rolando dela Cuesta, Jose Eleazar Jr., Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, Heminigildo Zayco, the late Ma. Clara Lobregat, the late President Ferdinand Marcos, and Mrs. Marcos. In its appeal, the government invoked the graft court’s own previous judgments that “coco-levy funds are public funds," in particular one Sandiganbayan ruling involving disputed UCPB shares and in another involving shares in San Miguel Corp. The OSG also pointed out that in those rulings, the Sandiganbayan had declared as “unconstitutional" Section 2 of Presidential Decree 755 which the defendants had used in support of their claim that placing the coco levy funds as interest-free deposits in the UCPB was a valid and regular act. “When the subject coconut levy funds were deposited at the UCPB without interest, the same definitely deprived the Republic of the income to which it was lawfully entitled since they are public funds," government lawyers said. —MRT/VS, GMA News