THE Supreme Court (SC) has upheld a ruling of the Sandiganbayan revoking the sequestration of a property in Baguio City belonging to Imelda and Ramon Cojuangco, founder of telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), who are known allies of the Marcos family.
In a 10-page decision penned by Associate Justice Maria Filomena Singh, the SC Third Division rejected the appeal of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) seeking the reversal of the March 13, 2020 decision and the January 5, 2021 resolution of the Sandiganbayan which granted the petition of C&O Investment and Realty Corporation and its chairman and president Miguel Cojuangco, who is one of the compulsory heirs of the Cojuangco couple.
Associate Justices Henri Jean Paul Inting, Samuel Gaerlan and Japar Dimaampao concurred with the decision.
The Sandiganbayan has held the Baguio City property cannot be considered as ill-gotten wealth because it was acquired in December 1955 by the Cojuangcos, a decade before Ferdinand Marcos Sr. became president, which means that they could not have acquired it through their closeness or links to the late dictator.
“As correctly held by the Sandiganbayan, the subject property could not have been acquired by the spouses Cojuangco through any illegal or improper use of funds belonging to the government, and thus is not a proper object of sequestration, as intended by Executive Order No. 1,” the SC ruling, which was dated August 30, 2023 but made public only recently, stated.
The anti-graft court likewise noted that the Cojuangco couple presented a deed of absolute sale dated December 23, 2976 showing that even before the PCGG issued its sequestration letter, they have already sold the property to C&O Investment and Realty Corp. and as such, the PCGG should not have considered it as part of their assets.
However, C&O failed to immediately transfer the property to its name and belatedly learned about the PCGG sequestration order when it sought an updated certified true copy of the title for the said property.
The High Court also said that the letter of sequestration covering the Baguio property was legally infirm as it did not follow the PCGG’s own rules which called for any sequestration order to be issued upon the authority of at least two of its commissioners.
The letter of sequestration was signed only by an acting director, the SC added.
“It is clear that the letter of sequestration, which was signed by then acting director of the PCGG IRS Danilo Jimenez, suffers from legal infirmity as it is in blatant violation of the PCGG’s own Rules and Regulations. Not only was the authority of Jimenez only inadvertently omitted, no such authority legally existed,” the SC said, adding the PCGG failed to prove that the letter of sequestration was issued in accordance with law.
“Unfortunately, the PCGG failed to overcome this burden,” it said.
