The Sandiganbayan has acquitted two former National Livelihood Development Corporation (NLDC) officials and businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles of their graft and malversation charges involving P5 million in Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).
Acquitted, aside from Napoles, were former NLDC president Gondelina G. Amata and division chief III Gregoria G. Buenaventura.
Napoles filed a demurrer to evidence seeking the dismissal of the charges on alleged weakness of the prosecution's evidence against her. The filing of the pleading was denied by the anti-graft court.
However, with the acquittal of Amata and Buenaventura, the charges against Napoles were also dismissed by the court.
The charges against them involved the P5 million PDAF of former La Union congressman Victor Francisco C. Ortega whose charges had earlier been dismissed by the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB).
The prosecution alleged that the accused coursed the public funds through Napoles' Social Development Program for Farmers Foundation, Inc. (SDPFFI). It further alleged that the funds did not go to the intended beneficiaries of the livelihood project but to the accused.
In its decision on the Amata and Buenaventura cases, the which underwent trial, anti-graft court ruled that there was nothing in the records that would show how the two had any pecuniary gain or benefit from the subject transactions.
The court said there was nothing that sufficiently proved that SDPFFI was non-existent, or that the intended beneficiaries were fictional. "The non-government organization might have relocated, and the named beneficiaries could have passed away, moved, or changed addresses, complicating the Field Investigating Office's efforts to track them down," the court said. These uncertainties make the prosecution's findings questionable, it stressed.
"Verily, with the acquittal of the accused public officers, Amata and Buenaventura, there is no public officer whom the accused private individual, Napoles, could have conspired with," said the court which also also ordered the dismissal of the charges against Napoles.
Despite the acquittal of Napoles in the case, she remains detained at the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) for plunder conviction in another an earlier case also involving PDAF.
The 98-page decision dated issued last Sept. 18 was written by Associate Justice Arthur O. Malabaguio with the concurrence of Second Division Chairperson Associate Justice Geraldine Faith A. Econg and Associate Justice Edgardo M. Caldona.