Ombudsman junks plea of Ilocos Sur officials facing graft

June 26, 2022 JUST IN

BAGUIO CITY (June 26, 2022)— The Office of the Ombudsman has denied the petition for partial reconsideration of two former mayors of Narvacan town in Ilocos Sur facing graft raps.
The nine-page ruling containing the consolidated order issued by Graft Investigator Daniel Von Evan Panelo; Assistant Ombudsman Pilarita Lapitan, and approved by Ombudsman Samuel Martirez, junked the petition of former Narvacan mayor Edgardo Zaragoza and his son, also former Narvacan Mayor Zuriel Zaragoza, for lack of merit.
The two Zaragozas were indicted by the Ombudsman for Malversation of public funds and the Falsification of public documents in violation of Section 3 (e)  of Republic Act 3019.
The father and son had been in office in Narvacan for more or less three decades.
The Ombudsman also included municipal accountants Melody Cadacio and Mario Cabinte, education research assistant, to be slapped with graft raps.
Narvacan Mayor and League of Municipalities of the Philippines  President Luis “Chavit” Singson filed the charges accusing the Zaragozas of graft and corruption involving misappropriations of hundreds of millions of pesos from tobacco excise tax shares of Narvacan, Falsification of public documents, and bloated the number of tobacco farmers as beneficiaries.   “The people of Narvacan were suffering due to abuses of local officials in this town,” Singson earlier stated in his complaint against the Zaragozas.
Though the Zaragozas have argued that the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor (OPP) had dismissed Constante Cabitac’s complaint about Grave Coercion against them and ruled that Cabitac failed to sufficiently establish that he was intimidated in executing his second affidavit.
Cabitac is the president of the farmers association of Narvacan, who turned witness against the Zaragozas.  He testified that he was made to encash checks more than 10 times, including a P35 million check.  “The mayor will just give me an amount that I could spend to buy grocery items,” he also revealed.
The Ombudsman did not bite the Zaragozas’ arguments and denied their  motions stating that “ the OPP cannot be considered as a court of
competent jurisdiction as it does not exercise judicial or quasi-judicial
functions in the discharge of its duties in the resolution of the
preliminary investigation.  “Consequently, whatever factual determination the OPP has made
in the resolution of the Grave Coercion case, Cabitac had filed against Eduardo had no bearing to the present controversy before this Office,” the Ombudsman ruled.
Earlier, Singson wrote DILG Secretary Eduardo Año, asking for an in-depth investigation of the annual tobacco excise tax shares of Narvacan.
In 2015 and 2016, Narvacan local officials enacted two ordinances appropriating P20M; P7,500,000, and P177,500,000.00 from the town’s tobacco excise tax shares through the federation of tobacco farmers and Balikatan sa Kaunlaran rural improvement club.
Artemio A. Dumlao