Tax appeals court defers arraignment of Janet Lim Napoles

The Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) on Wednesday deferred the arraignment of alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles for tax evasion cases in connection with her alleged untruthful declaration of tax liabilities, and her failure to pay her right income tax.

Napoles’ lawyer Ian Encarnacion said their camp filed earlier in the day a motion for reconsideration on the court’s earlier ruling denying his client’s motion to quash the cases.

Encarnacion then moved for the deferment of the proceedings until the court resolves his client’s motion for reconsideration.

“We filed a motion for reconsideration on the grounds of the prosecution’s failure to supply accurate information in the cases. We also believe that the court must make a deeper analysis of the issues involved,” Encarnacion said.

Third Division member Associate Justice Esperanza Fabon-Victorino, however, said that Napoles’ camp had already raised those arguments in their earlier motion to quash.

“You raised those arguments already in your motion to quash which the court has already resolved to deny. Is there anything new?” Victorino said.

The court, nonetheless, decided to postpone the arraignment and gave the prosecution five five days to file its comment on Napoles’ motion for reconsideration.

The arraignment was reset to June 15 at 1:30 p.m.

Napoles immediately left the courtroom after the cancelled proceedings amid heavy security by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology  (BJMP).

Napoles is facing 12 counts of violation of the National Internal Revenue Code (NIRC) over her alleged failure to pay P44.71-million worth of tax liabilities for years 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) who filed the cases before the CTA in May last year, said Napoles also failed to supply correct information in her ITRs for the same years, even declaring that she had zero income for years 2006 and 2009.

This, the DOJ said, was despite Napoles and her husband’s ownership of various real estate properties, insurance policies, stocks shares and motor vehicles.

The DOJ said that in those years, the Napoles couple was also found “to have invested tens of millions of pesos in various new corporations” which made their ITR declarations more doubtful.

Napoles’ husband Jaime is facing six counts of tax evasion also before the CTA Third Division for his alleged failure to pay tax liabilities amounting P16.47 million.

Jaime has yet to be arraigned for the cases.

Meanwhile, their youngest daughter Jeane Catherine Napoles is also facing P17.46-million tax evasion case before the CTA for  allegedly failing to file her income tax return (ITR) as well as to pay her income tax for the year 2011, despite her acquisition in that year of a posh condominium unit at Ritz Carlton in Los Angeles, United States worth $2 million.

The trial proper of Jeane's cases are set to start on May 11.

Napoles is currently detained at the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong City following her conviction by the Makati Regional Trial Court for an illegal detention case filed by her second cousin and former employee Benhur Luy, the primary state witness in the pork barrel scam.

She was sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment.

Napoles is also facing multiple plunder and graft charges before the Sandiganbayan for allegedly orchestrating the multibillion-peso pork barrel scam. —NB, GMA News