Suspected pork barrel scam architect Janet Lim Napoles has appealed to the Supreme Court to grant her provisional liberty while being tried in one of the plunder cases filed against her before the Sandiganbayan.
In a five-page motion filed last July 6, Napoles asked that she be granted bail in the plunder case against her and former Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile before the Sandiganbayan’s Third Division, in connection with the alleged misuse of the lawmaker’s Priority Development Assistant Fund.
Napoles specifically sought for the reversal of the anti-graft court’s Oct. 16, 2015 and March 2, 2016 rulings denying her motion to post bail in the case.
Napoles argued that she should be allowed to post bail in this case —just like Enrile—because prosecutors “failed to present strong evidence.”
“The prosecutions’ evidence is built on the questionable credibility of whistleblowers which if exposed to analysis shows inconsistencies manifesting the lies on which they are buil’ read the pleading filed by lawyer Stephen David, Napoles’ lawyer.
“Even the testimonies of the whistleblowers themselves failed to prove the alleged conspiracy between petitioner, Senator Enrile and lawyer Gigi Reyes.
“Benhur Luy admitted that he did not witness any meeting between Senator Enrile and the petitioner. In fact, none of the witnesses testified that they were privy to or have personal knowledge about the supposed agreement which petitioner, Senator Enrile and Atty. Reyes may have in the alleged scheme to carry out the purported PDAF scam,” Napoles argued.
The petitioner also argued that the allegation that she and other accused accumulated or acquired ill-gotten wealth in the amount of at least P50 million should “fall into pieces as the amount of money pilfered cannot be exactly determined.”
“The fact of the matter is that the petitioner is not an incorporator, trustee or officer of any of the six NGOs involved in the PDAF-funded projects of Senator Enrile,” Napoles said.
With this, Napoles said that the Sandiganbayan committed grave abuse of discretion in denying her earlier plea for bail.
Napoles’ camp earlier claimed that her acquittal by the Court of Appeals in the serious illegal detention case has destroyed the credibility of Luy as witness in the pork barrel cases.
The Department of Justice has started a reinvestigation on the PDAF cases after her acquittal with DoJ Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II even hinting on Napoles’ eligibility as a state witness.
In August 2015, the SC granted the petition for bail of Enrile in the same plunder case with Napoles before the Sandiganbayan due to his “advanced age and poor health.”
The two other former senators indicted with Napoles in separate plunder cases before the anti-graft court—Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon “Bong’ Revilla Jr.—also file bail petitions, but were both junked.
Napoles has previously filed several petitions before the SC seeking to stop her indictment in the PDAF cases, but all were dismissed by the high court.