Desierto impeachment case thrown out

The House of Representatives committee on justice yesterday overwhelmingly turned down an impeachment charge against the country's top anti-graft prosecutor for "lack of substance".

Voting an overwhelming 35-5 decision, the justice panel ruled that the impeachment complaint, filed by private lawyer Ernesto Francisco Jr, failed to link Ombudsman Aniano Desierto directly to bribery.

Francisco had accused Desierto, who heads the anti-graft Office of the Ombudsman, of receiving a bribe from his client in 1997 in exchange for withholding investigation on government personnel involved in a bank fraud.

Aside from graft cases involving government personnel, the Ombudsman's office is also handling the corruption-related cases against former president Joseph Estrada.

The rejection of the complaint against Desierto was criticised by legislators who had endorsed the impeachment complaint – the second filed against the Ombudsman whose office has the authority to prosecute former and serving government officials.

"The Ombudsman is very powerful," said Representative Oscar Moreno, principal sponsor of the complaint. "I thought Congress would stand up to the challenge to participate in the cleansing process," Moreno said in a television interview.

"Have we allowed the impeachment process to take its natural course, or has Congress failed to give meaning to the impeachment process as mandated by the Constitution?" Moreno asked.

Rep. Satur Ocampo, another lawmaker who supported the impeachment move, said the members of the justice committee were "too technical" in deciding on the substance of the impeachment complaint.

The rejection of the complaint against Desierto also came a week after the same panel in the House of Representatives voted to adopt tighter rules on evidence in impeachment cases.

The rules the House of Representatives had adopted was more stringent compared to that used in last year's impeachment of Estrada where evidence to back up complaints were not as strict as now.

"The charges made by Francisco against Desierto were largely based on hearsay," said Rep. Antonio Abaya, one of the lawmakers who rejected the impeachment complaint.

Earlier, Francisco presented to reporters a 1997 tape recorded conversation between him and his then client Luke Roxas, former owner of the Bank of Southeast Asia. In that conversation, Francisco and Roxas discussed the alleged gifts they have given to Desierto in 1997.

The lawyer claimed that the gifts, which consisted of $9,615 and expensive video recording equipment, were supposed to be bribes for the Ombudsman to defer investigations involving officials of the partly state-owned oil firm Petron Corp.

Several officials of Petron have allegedly connived with officials of the BSA so that they can personally encash cheques listed as payment to the Philippine Ports Authority amounting to millions of pesos. Roxas had reportedly sought the deferment of the investigations to prevent a bank run which will ruin BSA.

In an interview after the two-hour proceedings, Francisco said the panel did not give him the chance to explain his charges against Desierto. "I am a citizen who is saying that the Ombudsman received a bribe. The Representatives should have listened to me – I am the evidence. I also have the documents," Francisco said.

However, he remained optimistic that his complaint would still be considered by the legislature despite yesterday's vote by the justice panel. Despite the justice panel's rejection, the entire 214-members of the House of Representatives will still discuss Francisco's complaint.

The justice panel's decision on the impeachment complaint can still be overturned by a vote of at least one-third of the total membership.

"There is still hope. I believe the legislators will see that the country needs to know the truth," Francisco told reporters."