Court junks estafa case vs. WellMed owner, whistleblowers on technicality

A Quezon City court has dismissed charges against the owner of a dialysis clinic and the two former employees who revealed an alleged ghost claims scheme involving PhilHealth and the company.

The city's regional trial court (RTC) dismissed a case for estafa through falsification of official documents for having been filed in the wrong court, said former presidential spokesman Harry Roque, the lawyer for the two whistleblowers.

The court rejected the case because the offense has a maximum applicable penalty of six years imprisonment, making it fall under the jurisdiction of first level courts.

It ruled that the three accused persons may still be prosecuted if the cases would be refiled before the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court.

"Finally, the court emphasizes that the dismissal of these cases has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the accused," Judge Janet Abergos-Samar of the Quezon City RTC Branch 219 wrote.

Bryan Sy, one of the owners of WellMed Dialysis Center, and former WellMed employees Edwin Roberto and Liezel Santos De Leon were charged by the Department of Justice for allegedly conspiring to use falsified documents to collect payments from PhilHealth for alleged medical services to patients who had already died.

Roberto and De Leon have been provisionally admitted to the government's witness protection program for 90 days

Roberto earlier said that more or less 10 deceased patients' benefits were being used by the dialysis center to rake in payables from the government-owned PhilHealth.

PhilHealth officials, on the other hand, confirmed that they were able to monitor fraudulent acts involving WellMed. Their findings showed that 28 of the medical cases that have been filed involved dead patients while 12 others are under investigation.

In response, Roque said he was alarmed by the case dismissal. He maintained that his clients, whistleblowers Roberto and De Leon, should not have been impleaded "because there is nothing in the witness protection program law that required that they be charged."

Roque said PhilHealth senior vice president Jojo del Rosario "should be fired ASAP" for impleading his clients, and for failing to charge PhilHealth officials whom he said colluded with the owners of WellMed.

"The proper charge should have been graft and corruption or plunder against the owners of WellMed who are obviously in collusion with people within PhilHealth," he said in a statement.

For his part, Sy's lawyer, Rowell Ilagan, welcomed the dismissal, calling it a "positive development" that supports their position that the crime charged is "not a grave felony."

"As such, the admission of the alleged whistleblowers to the Witness Protection Program is highly irregular as the admission to WPP is only limited to a grave felony," Ilagan said. —KG/RSJ, GMA News