AN officer of the Bureau of Internal Revenue ended up with a longer prison term after the Sandiganbayan junked his motion for reconsideration seeking reversal of his conviction for direct bribery on February 3, 2021.
Appellant Abolais Ampa, revenue officer 3 assigned at the BIR-Regional District Office 29, was previously found guilty of demanding and receiving P400,000 “for the boys” from a private company in exchange for clearing the latter of its tax liabilities.
Also convicted was his co-accused, Nora Halamani, BIR-RDO 29 group supervisor. They were both sentenced to two years and 11 months imprisonment with a fine of P1.2 million each.
In his appeal filed October 2020, the accused claimed the Manila regional trial court erred in finding him criminally liable, arguing that the case against him was defective since the Dealco Farms Inc. (DFI) did not give the money as a gift but to entrap him and his co-defendant.
Likewise, he disputed the sufficiency of evidence to support a conviction, claiming there was no proof that he demanded or physically received the bribe money.
In affirming the decision of the Manila RTC, the Sandiganbayan said the prosecution proved all the elements of direct bribery beyond reasonable doubt largely on the testimony of the DFI representative who delivered the marked money and the agents of the National Bureau of Investigation who set up the entrapment and arrested Ampa ang Halamani.
“The Court finds no reason to reverse and set aside the accused-appellant’s conviction,” the anti-graft court declared.
However, the Sandiganbayan said the correct imposable penalty should be four years and two months, which added 15 months to Ampa’s original sentence.
Associate Justice Maryann E. Corpus-Mañalac penned the resolution with Associate Justices Rafael R. Lagos and Maria Theresa V. Mendoza-Arcega concurring.
