A businessman who represented a firm that supplied liquid fertilizer to Buenavista town in Agusan del Norte in 2004 pleaded to a lesser offense, instead of graft, and was meted out a fine of P6,000 by the Sandiganbayan.
Lucio R. Lapidez of the firm Feshan Philippines, Inc. pleaded to a lesser offense of failure to render accounts under Article 218 of the Revised Penal Code.
Lapidez’s move was the same legal maneuver done by Buenavista’s former Mayor Percianita G. Racho who was also charged with graft. The former mayor was also ordered to pay a fine of P6,000 in 2019.
The anti-graft court granted the plea of Lapidez and the earlier motion of Racho after the court was informed by the prosecution that the civil liability in the case had been settled.
This means that both Lapidez and Racho had paid the government the amount of the alleged overprice in the purchase of liquid fertilizer for Buenavista town in 2004.
The prosecution alleged that the town purchased 2,000 bottles of Bio-Nature Organic Liquid Fertilizer at P1,500 each from Feshan Philippines without public bidding from April to August 2004.
As a result, the prosecution said that P3 million in public funds was released to Feshan even if the market price for the fertilizers was only P125 per bottle.
Had Lapidez and Racho been convicted of graft, they would have been sentenced to a prison term on top of payment of civil liability, among other penalties.
The resolution granting Lapidez ‘s plea for lesser offense was written by the court’s second division Chairperson Oscar C. Herrera Jr. with the concurrence of Associate Justices Michael Frederick L. Musngi and Arthur O. Malabaguio.