Supreme Court orders junking of graft case vs. Cotabato governor

The Supreme Court has ordered the Sandiganbayan to dismiss the graft case against Cotabato Governor Nancy Catamco and her former husband Pompey Perez in connection with an allegedly anomalous government purchase of fertilizers in 2004.

In another case the Office of the Ombudsman lost due to inordinate delay, the SC's First Division ruled that the almost five years it took for prosecutors to charge Catamco and her co-respondents in court was unjustified, considering that the issues involved were "simple" and "straightforward."

The High Court said the delay violated the right of Catamco and her co-accused to the speedy disposition of cases.

In 2004, the local government of Poro, Cebu, headed by then-mayor Edgar Rama, purchased liquid fertilizers worth P5 million from a company owned by Perez and Catamco. State auditors would later find, among others, that the fertilizers were overpriced by more than 1,000%.

A complaint was filed against Catamco, Perez, and public officials in June 2013. The Ombudsman ordered the respondents to file their counter-affidavits to the allegations; they would do so from September 2014 to May 2015.

The Ombudsman indicted the respondents for one count of violation of the anti-graft law and two counts of malversation more than two years later, or in July 2017. The charges were filed before the Sandiganbayan in 2018.

Citing inordinate delay, Catamco and Perez asked the Sandiganbayan to dismiss the cases, but the anti-graft court denied their motions, saying the delay was justified because of the volume of the records involved, the number of respondents, and the "steady stream of cases" reaching the Ombudsman.

The SC did not agree. In a July 28, 2020 decision made public on September 22, the First Division said that while the court recognizes the inevitability of "institutional delay," this alone does not "justify the Ombudsman's failure to comply with the periods provided under the rules."

The SC added that "the issues in this case are simple, straightforward and are easily determinable considering that only one transaction is involved."

"There was also no allegation that the petitioners herein had conspired with those involved in the other so-called 'Fertilizer Fund Scam' cases," the SC said.

The SC also pointed out that the long investigation -- over two years, counted from the time the last counter-affidavit was filed -- "is still quite unreasonable especially considering that, at the end of the day, the Ombudsman merely relied on, and even adopted as its only facts, the audit findings  and previous issuances of the COA (Commission on Audit)."

"In this light, the Ombudsman's delay in the termination of the preliminary investigation against all respondents was clearly unjustified," the SC said.

The court also found that the petitioners asserted their right to the speedy disposition of cases at the earliest possible time.

The decision was penned by Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, with concurrences from Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta and Associate Justices Jose Reyes, Jr., Amy Lazaro-Javier, and Mario Lopez. 

Catamco, when asked for her comment on the dismissal of charges filed against her, said that she felt vindicated and that she now has an undivided attention to making the province of North Cotabato a better place to live in.  —With a report from Malu Cadelina Manar/LBG, GMA News