THE Court of Appeals (CA) has dismissed the forfeiture case filed by the Anti-Money Laundering Council against a former high-ranking official of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and several others in connection with their alleged involvement in the so-called “pastillas” scam that previously rocked the Bureau of Immigration.
The forfeiture case covered nine bank accounts under the name of lawyer Joshua Paul Capiral, the former chief of the NBI Legal Assistance Section, and his brother, former BI officer Christopher John, and Rosalina Ang Chua and Ma. Luisa Rosario Chua.
The case was initially filed by the AMLC prosecutors before the Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court in 2023.
Prior to that, government prosecutors also filed charges for robbery, extortion and graft against the Capiral brothers.
The Capirals were accused of extorting money from immigration personnel involved in the pastillas scheme in exchange for clearing their names from the NBI investigation.
They were apprehended by their NBI colleagues in 2020 while in the act of receiving P200,000 in marked money from then immigration agent Jeffrey Dale Salameda Ignacio.
But in 2022, the Manila RTC junked the criminal charges against the Capirals.
The AMLC case said there is a strong probability that the said bank accounts received proceeds from money laundering activities as it noted significant amount of deposits and withdrawals, ranging from more than P14 million to over P2 million from 2016 to 2020.
The AMLC said the amount do not correspond to the incomes of the Capirals as NBI and BI officers.
The Muntinlupa RTC, in a ruling on March 17, 2023, ruled in favor of the AMLC and ordered the forfeiture of the money left in the said bank accounts, amounting to only P138,835.
The Capirals then elevated the case to the CA, telling the appellate court that the AMLC’s case has no legal substance considering the RTC’s junking of the criminal cases against them.
Likewise, they questioned the basis of the AMLC’s case, adding that the probe into their bank accounts covering the period from 2016 to 2020 when the pastillas scam started only in September 2020.
The CA found their arguments and evidence persuasive and dismissed the forfeiture case.
In junking the AMLC case, the appellate court held that that the former failed to present sufficient evidence to support its claim that the Capirals were engaged in unlawful activity or money laundering.
“It was not established by preponderance of evidence that the appellants participated in any unlawful activity or a money laundering offense in relation to the so-called pastillas scheme,” the CA ruling said.
The CA said that even though the amounts involved in the subject bank accounts were disproportionate to the Capirals’ incomes, the AMLC still failed to show sufficient evidence linking the funds to any unlawful activity.
“It bears repeating that there is no preponderance of evidence established by the Republic in the case at bench to warrant the forfeiture of the amounts in the subject bank accounts of the appellants in favor of the State,” it ruled.
