FORMER PNP-Firearms and Explosives Office (FEO) chief Raul Petrasanta, Police Col. Allan Parreño, and PNP non-uniformed personnel Sol Bargan have secured the approval of the Sandiganbayan to seek forensic examination of original records from the PNP-FEO Firearms Licensing Division.
In a resolution issued last September 13, the Sixth Division partially granted the motion of the three defendants to order the production of duplicate originals of the Applications for Firearm License before the anti-graft court for submission to analysis by handwriting experts.
Associate Justices Sarah Jane T. Fernandez, Michael Fredericl L. Musngi, and Kevin Narce B. Vivero directed the PNP to allow the accused and their counsel access to the identified documents or to bring them before the court to be examined, copied, and photographed.
On the other hand, Petrasanta, Parreño, and Bargan were told to coordinate with the Sixth Division clerk of court for the issuance of the necessary subpoena duces tecum.
The three defendants were among 15 individuals charged in 28 counts of graft by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2015 over alleged irregularities in the approval of firearms licenses in 2011 and 2012.
The indictments were issued based on an investigation into the recovery by the military of 44 AK-47 rifles after clashes with communist rebels.
The guns were traced to a procurement by a private firm and were supposedly licensed by the PNP Firearms and Explosives Office-(FEO) and the Supervisory Office for Security and Investigative Agency (SOSIA).
Former PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (PNP-CIDG) director and now Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong said the firearms were part of a shipment of 1,004 AK-47 rifles purchased by private individual Isidro Lozada of Caraga Security Agency.
Petrasanta, Parreño, and Bargan said the copies of the firearms licenses need to be scrutinized by the Questioned Documents Division of the National Bureau of Investigation and compared with their own specimen signatures.
They objected to the admission of the documents into the case records based on a claim that the signatures appearing on the documents were forgeries.
The defendants are challenging the validity of the charges against them, noting that the same PNP-FEO papers were used as the basis for the filing of the graft charges.
