THE Court of Appeals cleared a former reporter of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and three of its editors in connection with a news story about a P100 million transaction involving the law firm of former vice mayor Jejomar Binay.
Acquitted by the appellate court’s twelfth division were former Inquirer reporter Nancy Carvajal and former editors Artemio Engracia Jr., Jose Ma. Nolasco and Nilo Paurom.
The ruling penned by Associate Justice Ma.Consejo Gengos-Ignalaga reversed the June 15, 2022 ruling of Branch 139 of the Makati Regional Trial Court, which convicted the PDI personnel for libel and ordered them to pay P2 million in damages.
The case stemmed from a PDI story Carvajal wrote, which was published on March 17, 2016 headlined “Binay sent P100M to HK via Philram Transactions Arranged by his Law Firm.”
Binay’s law firm partner, Martin Subido and the Subido Pagente Certeza Mendoza and Binay Law Offices, filed the libel case, claiming that the PDI story made it appear that they were engaged in money laundering.
The story noted that Philram was embroiled in the alleged transfer of $81 million that computer hackers took from the Bangladesh Central Bank account and diverted to the Philippines.
It also quoted a report from the Anti-Money Laundering Council alleging that Binay, through dummies, received kickbacks from infrastructure projects in Makati, including the Makati City Hall building II and the Makati Science High School building, when he was still the city mayor.
Binay repeatedly denied the allegations and said these were linked to efforts to derail his presidential bid in 2016.
The Makati RTC declared the respondents guilty of libel in a ruling dated February 27, 2023. But the CA, in its ruling dated July 31, 2025, reversed the ruling as it held that the PDI article was not libelous and that the RTC erred in its ruling.
The CA explained that the published article addressed matters of public interest, specifically graft and corruption, and or money laundering.
“The subject matter of the published news report, which was based on the alleged AMLC resolution, is genuinely a matter of public concern. In fact, issues of graft and corruption in various construction projects in Makati City during Binay’s tenure as mayor have been the subject of Senate investigation. For this reason, it garnered media attention and drew public attention not only to VP Binay but also to some private individuals and entities associated with them,” the CA ruling held.
“Therefore, even assuming that private complainants are not public figures, this does not mean that they could not validly be the subject of public comment, even if they were not holding a public position, for they could be involved in a public issue,” it added.
The CA stressed the PDI news article was not defamatory as it did not impute, ascribe, or attribute the crime of money laundering to Subido and the law firm.
It added that the report merely stated that the entity to which the money was remitted was previously involved in another scheme that was the subject of an investigation by AMLC.
Likewise, the appellate court held that Carvajal believed the information in which the story was based came from a valid source, the AMLC report.
