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QC court acquits Imelda in 5 tax evasion cases filed in '91


A Quezon City court on Wednesday acquitted, for lack of evidence, former First Lady Imelda Marcos in five tax evasion cases filed against her by the Bureau of Internal Revenue about 16 years ago. The BIR filed the cases in 1991 after Marcos allegedly failed to pay the taxes due in the amount of P33,734.00 that she earned from her income of P192,080 in 1985 and the taxable estate in the sum of P5,736,264,176 in 1989. “The prosecution’s scanty evidence failed to establish the element of criminal intent on the part of Mrs Marcos in all the criminal complaints filed against her," said Judge Rosa Samson Tatad of Quezon City regional trial court branch 105. Marcos, who was accompanied by her legal counsel, Robert Sison, during the promulgation of the court’s decision, said “justice for the Marcoses prevailed" and that she was “sure that justice for the Filipino people will follow." In a 19-page ruling, Samson-Tatad acquitted the widow of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos of violating Sections 45, 50, 82, 83(a) and 84 of the 1977 National Internal Revenue Code (NILRC). The BIR had claimed that Marcos did not give written notice of her husband’s death on Sept. 29, 1989, failed to file an income tax return for taxable year 1985 and the estate tax return of the former President. The prosecution argued that Mrs. Marcos earned a total income of P192,080 for taxable year, which supposed to be treated as taxable income. In her defense, Mrs. Marcos claimed that after she and her family were brought to Honolulu, Hawaii, following the 1986 EDSA “people power" uprising and owing to the tight security during their exile, she was unable to file her tax return and further that notices from various government offices failed to reach her. The defense added that the prosecution did not sufficiently prove that Mrs. Marcos had indeed received the amount of P192,080 in 1985 since it failed to attach to the records the other documentary evidence in support of its claim that she supposedly received money on account of positions she held at the Home Development Mutual Fund and the National Food Authority. -GMANews.TV
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