CA asked to reverse Manila RTC ruling on dollar-salting cases vs Imelda

Former Solicitor General Francisco Chavez yesterday asked the Eighth Division of the Court of Appeals (CA) to reconsider its decision last Feb. 28 that junked his petition for the inhibition of Manila Judge Silvino Pampilo from the dollar-salting cases filed against former First Lady Imelda Marcos.

Last March 10, Judge Pampilo of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 26 cleared Mrs. Marcos on 32 counts of dollar-salting in connection with the $683-million Swiss bank accounts of the Marcoses.

Chavez filed the dollar-salting cases against Mrs. Marcos in 1991 when he was still solicitor general under the administration of former President Corazon Aquino.

All these cases were consolidated into three sub-cases and account for 70 percent of all pending civil and criminal suits against the Marcoses.

Chavez said the Feb. 28, 2008 decision of the appellate court has not yet attained finality. As such, the writ of preliminary injunction enjoining Pampilo from hearing the cases is still effective.

Chavez noted that the appellate court’s resolution dated July 20, 2007 stated that the writ of preliminary injunction shall subsist until final resolution of the instant case. He likewise reiterated his position that the criminal cases should be remanded to the Executive Judge of the Manila RTC for re-raffling to a new judge. 

In the Feb. 28 decision, penned by Associate Justice Jose Reyes Jr., the CA’s Eighth Division said Chavez failed to sufficiently prove his allegations that Pampilo was biased in favor of the Marcoses in ruling on the criminal cases.

Chavez stressed that Pampilo’s “overeagerness” to decide the criminal cases pending at the Manila RTC reveals a premeditated intent to hasten Marcos’s acquittal.

“Hence, Judge Pampilo’s action on the criminal cases pending before him is premature and in gross violation of this Honorable Court’s injunction. Judge Pampilo cannot simply conceal his bias for Mrs. Marcos. He just cannot help but reveal in his mute actuations that he had long been overeager to sweep the criminal cases before him into the garbage bin of judicial memory,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chavez also asked the CA to nullify Pampilo’s judgment of acquittal on Mrs. Marcos’s dollar-salting suits and order the reopening of the cases.

He argued that Pampilo committed grave abuse of discretion by promulgating his decision in violation of the appellate court’s subsisting injunction.

“In that, Judge Pampilo is wrong. For his action was clearly done with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction. Verily, a judgment of acquittal rendered with grave abuse of discretion is a void judgment that does not commence the attachment of a first jeopardy as would preclude, on the ground of double jeopardy, a retrial or re-hearing,” he said.  – Mike Frialde