THE Sandiganbayan has granted the appeal of two children of alleged pork-barrel-scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles to reduce their bail and cut it to P5.57 million each from P22.3 million each.
The anti-graft court’s Third Division approved the consolidated motion filed by Napoles’ daughter Jo Christine and son James Christopher along with their uncle Ronald Francisco Lim on Dec. 15.
“The court, without underestimating the gravity and the number of the crimes herein charged, may exercise its discretion to fix or reduce the amount of bail bond based on the nature and the circumstances of the crimes charged to give substance and meaning to the constitutional right of the accused to bail,” the court said.
But the court rejected the plea of Napoles’ children and Lim to revoke the warrants for their arrest.
The Napoles siblings and their uncle were slapped with 97 counts of graft and 997 counts of misuse of public funds through the falsification of documents in connection with the P900-million Malampaya fund scam.
Earlier, the three respondents urged the anti-graft court to set their bail at P690,000 each, which would have been 97 percent lower than the recommended bail.
The court then reduced the bail for each count of graft to P7,500 from P30,000.
On the other hand, the Sandiganbayan lowered the bail for each count of fund misuse from P200,000 to P50,000.
The charges arose from the supposed misuse of P900 million worth of government funds from the Malampaya natural gas project intended for the farmers affected by typhoons “Ondoy” and “Pepeng.”