MONDAY JANUARY 10, 2011

http://www.malaya.com.ph/jan10/news10.html

THE Sandiganbayan Second Division will hear today at 9 a.m. oral arguments on the motion for intervention filed by the Office of the Solicitor General on the plea bargaining agreement signed between the Office of the Ombudsman and retired Maj. Gen. Carlos F. Garcia.

But a court informant said there is a chance the defendants and their lawyers will not appear for lack of notice because copies of the OSG motion, filed on January 5, were sent to them by regular mail instead of personal service.

The deal forged between prosecutors and Garcia, former AFP comptroller, allowed him to walk on a plunder charge by pleading guilty to lesser offenses of direct bribery and violation of paragraph 4(b) of the Anti-Money Laundering Act or facilitating money laundering.

The deal also dropped his wife Clarita and children Ian Carl, Juan Paulo and Timothy Mark as co-defendants in the plunder and money laundering cases.

In return, the former military official reportedly offered to return P135 million worth of assets including bank deposits, motor vehicles, company shares and real estate assets out of the P303 million that the prosecution is seeking to recover under the plunder complaint filed in 2005.

Before a court-imposed gag order on the parties and their lawyers was issued last December 22, Special Prosecutor Wendell Barreras told reporters any deal with Garcia is still subject to court approval and that failing to get such sanction, the deal will be have to be scrapped.

But in its 34-page motion, the OSG said case records showed the deal had already been approved by the Court on May 4, 2010, barely two months left in the Arroyo presidency.

Solicitor General Jose Anselmo Cadiz asked the Sandiganbayan to nullify the bargaining agreement, recall the grant of bail to Garcia, and suspend further proceedings in the plunder and money laundering cases pending resolution of the motion for intervention.

The OSG challenged the Garcia deal on three main points:

• It violated court procedures for having entered into after the arraignment and after the prosecution has finished its presentation of evidence.

• The Armed Forces, being the offended party, was not consulted at all.

• The graft court and the prosecution have already made separate pronouncements that evidence against the accused was strong when his bail request was denied on Jan. 7, 2010.

Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Javier Colmenares, a human rights lawyer before joining politics, said there is a fourth legal question attending the Garcia plea bargain deal – how the principal defendant’s wife and children stand to benefit from the agreement without ever appearing before either the Sandiganbayan or the Office of the Ombudsman.

He said approval of such "an irregular plea bargain deal" would create a dangerous precedent where other defendants in criminal cases would simply go into hiding to await court approval for a plea bargaining agreement by their co-accused.

Former Tanodbayan Simeon Marcelo and former Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio said the evidence of conspiracy among the defendants could hardly be ignored particularly as Mrs. Garcia has admitted on record that she received "gratuity" money and large sums for foreign travels and shopping from military contractors.

Records of forfeiture cases pending before the Fourth Division likewise showed the family owned large tracts of land and residential lots in Iloilo, Baguio City and Batangas.

In addition, there were extensive paper trails of withdrawals Mrs. Garcia and her children made during a four-day period from October 5 to 8, 2004 – totaling P72.43 million from peso-denominated bank accounts and $967,215.99 taken from dollar time deposits.