Ex-Zamboanga Sibugay board member gets 40 years for graft, malversation

A former member of the provincial council of Zamboanga Sibugay was sentenced to a maximum of 40 years of imprisonment for multiple graft and malversation cases for pocketing more than P100,000 worth of supposed financial assistance for the poor.

In a 45-page resolution promulgated by the Sandiganbayan Fourth Division on August 30, 2016, former Zamboanga Sibugay provincial board (Sangguniang Panlalawigan) member Eric Cabarios was found guilty of five counts of violation of Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

Cabarios was also found guilty of another five counts of the complex crime of malversation of public funds through falsification of public documents as defined and penalized under the Revised Penal Code (RPC).

Cabarios was sentenced to an imprisonment of six years to 10 years for each count of graft and 10 years to 18 years for each count of malversation.

The court, however, clarified that in order for Cabarios to serve his sentence “the duration of his total imprisonment shall not exceed 40 years.”

Based on the information of the cases filed by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2010, Cabarios in an alleged conspiracy with two provincial board employees Michelle Navalta and James Ismael Revantad, encashed checks totaling P106,828 drawn from the provincial government’s fund.

The checks were allegedly encashed in five occasions from September 2001 to January 2002.

The Ombudsman said Cabarios, Navalta and Revantad falsified the disbursement vouchers and several other supporting documents to make it appear that the amount was distributed as financial assistance to alleged beneficiaries of the provincial government’s Aid the Poor Program.

The Ombudsman said the three officials made it appear that Cabarios had personally paid the cash assistance to the beneficiaries “when they knew that no such financial assistance was granted because alleged beneficiaries under the said program are fictitious or non-existent.”

The Fourth Division ordered the cases against Navalta to be temporarily archived as she remains at large.

Meanwhile, court records show that Revantad has just recently surfaced.

Fourth Division clerk of court Joffre Zapata said the trial proper of Revantad’s cases are set to commence soon.

In convicting Cabarios, the Fourth Division said an audit investigation report by the Commission on Audit as well as the testimonies of the prosecution’s witnesses all “revealed that there were irregularities in the disbursement of the funds pertaining to the Program.”

The court said the COA report and witnesses’ testimonies showed that Cabarios abrogated to himself the duties and functions of the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office (PSWDO) such as the screening and the actual payment of the beneficiaries.

The court said the prosecution was also able to establish that 29 of the beneficiaries of the program under the disbursement vouchers of Cabarios “were considered fictitious or non-existing because they could not be located….despite the audit team exhausting all efforts to locate them.”

The court said that while Cabarios presented a few supposed youth beneficiaries of the program, their testimonies were not convincing enough and instead only highlighted the alleged irregularities in the payment procedure.

“Unfortunately for him, some of these witnesses could not attest with certainty that their parents received the financial aid, while others merely reinforced the irregularities with which the beneficiaries were given money,” the ruling read. — RSJ, GMA News