The Court of Appeals has upheld the order of the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) to suspend former Customs official Teodoro Jumamil as board member of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP).
“Upon a perspicacious examination of the records, and based on the applicable laws and jurisprudence, we discern no grave abuse of discretion on the part of the respondent Ombudsman in ordering the preventive suspension of petitioner,” read the 16-page Sept. 22 decision of the CA Special Third Division.
With this, the appelate court junked Jumamil’s petition for certiorari which assailed the OMB’s June 26 order that slapped a six-month preventive suspension against him while there is a pending investigation against him over charges of serious dishonesty, grave misconduct, conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service, and violation of Republic Act 3019, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
In the same decision, the CA also directed Jumamil to explain within five days from receipt of the decision why he failed to disclose in the petition the fact that he commenced serving his preventive suspension on July 1, 2020.
The CA said it was “blindsided by petitioner's failure to disclose in his Petition that he had already commenced serving his preventive suspension even prior to the filing thereof.”
The appelate court reminded Jumamil that “Canon 10 of the Code of Professional Responsibility ordains that a lawyer shall not to do any falsehood, nor consent to the doing thereof in court.”
“Furthermore, Rule 12.04 provides that lawyers shall not unduly delay a case, impede the execution of a judgment, or misuse Court processes,” it added.
In its decision, the CA said “respondent Ombudsman found that there is strong evidence to prove that by assuming various positions in the BOC absent any lawful or valid appointment duly issued by competent authority, petitioner is guilty of Serious Dishonesty, Grave Misconduct and Conduct Prejudicial to the Best Interest of the Service, and a violation of RA 3019, otherwise known as the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.”
“This being so, respondent Ombudsman appropriately acted within his authority in issuing the Order dated 26 June 2020, placing petitioner under preventive suspension,” the CA ruled.
Jumamil is the subject of an investigation by the OMB over allegations of discharging official functions at the BOC despite the lack of a valid appointment.
He has been asked by BOC Commissioner Rey Leonardo Guerrero in November 2018 to join him as acting chief-of-staff (COS) if the Office of the Commissioner (OCOM) and was later recommended in December 2018 to become Deputy Commissioner of the BOC’s Revenue and Collections Monitoring Group (RCMG).
Even though he is a fellow law alumni of San Beda College of Law and was even appointed to the DBM in 2016 by the President, Jumamil has been criticized by President Duterte for holding multiple government positions.
“The respondent Ombudsman's finding of strong evidence against petitioner is not without any basis –– the hard evidence on record evinces petitioner's lack of authority to assume the positions entrusted to him by Comm. Guerrero. Petitioner's act of assuming the functions of Attorney V, Chief-of-Staff – OCOM, and Acting Deputy Commissioner of RCMG of the BOC, knowing fully well that he had no valid appointment coming from a competent authority to do so, constitutes, at the very least, a proper ground for preventive suspension,” the CA explained.