Andal Ampatuan Jr. gets 210 years for graft on 14th anniversary of Maguindanao Massacre

The Sandiganbayan on Thursday sentenced Datu Andal Uy Ampatuan Jr. to up to 210 years in prison after being found guilty of 21 counts of graft.

The case is in relation to the provision of fuel from a gasoline station he owns to the provincial government of Maguindanao.

The anti-graft court sentenced Ampatuan Jr. to imprisonment of 6 years to 1 month up to 10 years maximum for each of the 21 counts of the case, or at least 127 years and 9 months to 210 years.

He was also ordered to pay P44.18 million for the value of the undelivered fuel supplies, with an interest of 6% per annum.

Ampatuan Jr. is also permanently disqualified from holding public office.

The decision came on the commemoration of the 14th anniversary of the Maguindanao Massacre, where 58 people, including 32 journalists, were brutally murdered in election-related violence between rival political clans.

In 2019, a trial court convicted Ampatuan Jr. together with several members of the Ampatuan clan guilty of multiple murders in the Maguindanao massacre. They were judged guilty of 57 counts of murder.

Conspired with father

The Sandiganbayan 6th Division said it found Ampatuan Jr. conspired with his father, late Maguindanao governor Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr., and other government officials to award, without public bidding, a fuel supply contract for some road rehabilitation projects to his gasoline station in Shariff Aguak in 2008.

His co-accused, Samsudin Sema and Omar Camsa, certified the projects as completed but a special audit of the Commission of Audit found that the gasoline station did not make any delivery and the road rehabilitation projects were either not implemented or the validated accomplishments were far shorter than the reported accomplishments.

“The acts of the accused can be characterized as having been done with evident bad faith, or with ‘palpably and patently fraudulent and dishonest purpose to do… conscious wrongdoing for some perverse motive or ill will’,” the decision reads.

“While the Court cannot determine if there was no delivery at all or if there was only partial delivery of the fuel products to the provincial government of Maguindanao, the said acts of the accused also undoubtedly caused undue injury to the provincial government of Maguindanao because public funds were released as payment for goods not completely delivered,” the decision read.

Sema was found guilty of three counts of falsifying public documents and was sentenced to up to 7 years of imprisonment for each count. He was also fined P15,000.

Camsa was convicted of one count of falsification of public documents. He was sentenced to up to 7 years in prison and also fined P5,000. —RF, GMA Integrated News