BUSINESSMAN Ramon Aytona is the only accused left defending himself in a graft charge filed by the Office of the Ombudsman five years earlier over the Fertilizer Fund scam.
But in a resolution issued last March 7, the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division denied his motion to quash invoking loss of jurisdiction since he is a private person who was only implicated because his co-accused were municipal officials of Tuao, Cagayan.
The anti-graft court held that the trial may continue until its conclusion despite the dismissal of the cases against all public officials who were originally named co-defendants.
“A private person alone may still be prosecuted even if the conspirator public officer can no longer be charged, as long as the crime has not yet been extinguished and the basis of conspiracy no removed,” the Sandiganbayan declared, citing the 2014 Decision of the Supreme Court in the case of People vs. Go.
Case records showed prosecutors indicted former Tuao mayor Francisco Mamba Jr., municipal administrator Frederick Baligod, treasurer Rodolfo Cardenas, administrative assistants Merlina Dayag and Jose Palacpac, accounting clerk Anabel Turingan, agricultural officer Teresita Espinosa, clerk Juliana Filipina, and agricultural technologists Leticia Acob and Petra delos Santos over alleged irregularities attending the procurement of P5 million worth of bottled liquid fertilizer.
Aytona, who represented supplier Feshan Philippines Inc., was accused of conspiring with the municipal officials in defrauding the local government on the ground that the transaction did not undergo the required public bidding as well as the absence of proof that Feshan was the exclusive supplier of Bio-Nature fertilizer.
However, Mamba and the other municipal officers challenged the indictment up to the Supreme Court invoking their right to speedy disposition of cases and accusing the Ombudsman of incurring inordinate delay in resolving the complaint.
In 2022, the Supreme Court granted the defendants’ petition and ordered the Ombudsman to dismiss the case against all municipal officers. The SC order became final on September 30, 2022.
Aytona, who did not join the petition before the SC, was left on his own to face prosecution.
In his motion to quash, he argued that there can be no violation of RA 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act without a defendant who is a public officer. With cases against all accused who have any connection to a government post having been dropped, he contends that the criminal action against him has been extinguished.
The Sandiganbayan declared him wrong.
“The dismissal based on violation of the constitutional right to speedy disposition of cases extinguished the criminal liability of the accused public officers, but it did not extinguish the crime nor did it remove the basis of the charge of conspiracy between accused public officers and Aytona,” the court said.
