Supreme Court stands by refusal to release Leonen’s SALN

The Supreme Court has rejected the motion for reconsideration of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) seeking the release of Associate Justice Marvic Leonen's Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN).

The SC Public Information Office said the tribunal denied the motion for reconsideration which asked for the setting aside of an earlier court resolution that denied the OSG's request.

Aside from the OSG, lawyer Lorenzo "Larry" Gadon had also asked the SC for copies of the SALN and other information pertaining to Leonen "for purposes of preparing a quo warranto petition."

Both requests were denied on September 15.

Quo warranto is a legal proceeding that seeks, among others, to challenge a person's right to hold a public office. Then-chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno was removed from her post through a quo warranto petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida in 2018.

Sereno was ousted over allegations that she failed to file some of her SALNs when she was a law professor at the University of the Philippines (UP).

Gadon told the OSG in early September that the "same standard" applied to Sereno should also be applied to Leonen, who used to be the dean of the UP College of Law.

In 2019, the SC denied a number of requests for the full SALNs of the justices, saying at the time that the summaries of the SALNs from 2014 to 2017 were already posted on the court's website. — BM, GMA News