Ombudsman: Charge Nani Perez on $2-M ‘kickback’

IN 2001, it took then justice secretary Hernando B. Perez only two days to come out with a legal opinion endorsing a $470-million hydroelectric power contract that was awarded to the Argentine firm IMPSA (Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona Sociedad Anonima).

From that deal, Perez was accused of extorting $2 million from Mark Jimenez (Mario Batacan Crespo in real life) who brokered the multimillion-dollar contract for a project to rehabilitate and operate the 750-megawatt Caliraya-Botocan-Kalayaan (CBK) power complex in Laguna.

Almost six years had passed, prosecution of the case has yet to begin.

On Wednesday, April 16, Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez finally gave the go-signal for the filing of criminal cases against Perez and three other co-accused before the Sandiganbayan, upholding a January 2007 recommendation of a special panel.

Gutierrez signed a 24-page resolution, denying for lack of merit a number of appeals filed by Perez, including a motion for reconsideration and a motion to dismiss the cases stemming from Jimenez’s allegations that the former Department of Justice chief asked for $2 million from him in exchange for the execution of affidavits to be used in a case against former President Joseph Estrada.

Read the Ombudsman’s resolution.

In his complaint-affidavit, Jimenez said Perez “threatened and intimidated me and my family with bodily harm and incarceration in a city jail with hardened criminals and drug addicts unless I execute damaging affidavits against President Estrada and his cronies and associates.” Out of that incident, Jimenez, who was elected as congressman of Manila in May 2001, said he was “forced to come across with $2 million.”

The amount had been coursed through a Hong Kong bank account of businessman Ernesto Escaler, who later transferred most of the money to another Hong Kong bank account, which was under the name of Perez’s brother-in-law Ramon Arceo.
The IMPSA deal supposedly pushed through under the Arroyo administration after the money had been deposited.

The Ombudsman disregarded Jimenez’s affidavit of desistance, withdrawing from the case and seeking its “unconditional” dismissal, filed on October 2, 2007.

Two days after, Perez invoked the affidavit in seeking the dismissal of the case pending at the Ombudsman.

“An affidavit of desistance carries no persuasive effect, especially when executed as an afterthought,” the Ombudsman said in setting aside Jimenez’s withdrawal.

“After a perspicacious review of the records, the undersigned found nothing that would indicate that there is reason to disturb the earlier findings of the Special Panel,” Gutierrez said in the order endorsing the indictment of Perez, his wife Rosario, brother-in-law Arceo, and business associate Escaler.

Gutierrez also denied Perez’s motion to dismiss the case, saying it was a prohibited pleading, citing Section 4 (d) of Administratrive Order No. 7 that says “no motion to dismiss shall be allowed except for lack of jurisdiction.”

Apart from extortion, Perez also faces a charge of falsification of public documents (penalized under Article 171 of the Revised Penal Code) for not including in his 2001 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN) the amount of US$1.7 million deposited in his and his wife’s bank accounts.

Perez, his wife, and Arceo had appealed the special panel’s recommendation of the filing of the falsification charge, saying the Ombudsman probers “failed to take judicial notice of the findings of the Regional Trial Court of Batangas.”

The motion had also been denied, saying “the ruling of the trial court finding the public utterances or remarks of Jimenez as derogatory could not affect the criminal complaints pending before the Office of the Ombudsman.”

Citizens Battle Against Corruption party-list Rep. Joel Villanueva said the Ombudsman’s order for the filing of the case against Perez and his three cohorts does not deserve any commendation.

“It has taken them too long. If the administration is really serious, it should have prosecuted this case a long time ago. Pero parang pakitang-gilas lang ang nangyayari. You cannot help but doubt their moves, specially after Mark Jimenez backed out of the case. Maybe it will take them 10 more years before this case is decided,” the anti-graft advocate in Congress lamented.

“The Ombudsman has a lot of catching up to do. This case is just one of the many pending cases before the office, involving big fishes in government,” Villanueva asserted. “The Ombudsman’s batting average is so dismal.”