Philippines: Ex-senator acquitted in high-profile plunder case

Manila, Philippines – An anti-graft court in the Philippines has acquitted movie star-turned-politician Ramon Revilla Jr of plunder, the first verdict among several high-profile cases in the biggest corruption scandal to hit the country in the last decade.

The Sandiganbayan court, however, on Friday convicted Revilla’s aide Richard Cambe and his alleged co-conspirator Janet Lim-Napoles of the same crime.

It said the prosecution failed to prove that the former senator was “guilty beyond reasonable doubt” of conspiring with Cambe and Napoles to embezzle more than $4m of his “pork barrel” discretionary funds.

The court ordered Revilla to return the equivalent of $2.3m to the national treasury.

Revilla also faces graft charges but with the resolution of his plunder case, he has been allowed to post bail and be released from detention.

The “pork barrel” refers to the practice of appropriating public money for local projects through Congress. A legacy of the late Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the practice has remained untouched and has become a source of massive corruption.

Revilla’s plunder case was part of a larger “pork barrel” scam involving another two former senators and several other congressmen who allegedly pocketed a total $189m.

It was the first to reach a resolution, and the verdict may foreshadow the way the court will decide on the rest of the “pork barrel” scam cases. That is, whether any high-ranking politician will be punished for corruption.

When Revilla and senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Jinggoy Estrada were charged and arrested for plunder in 2014, the highly publicised “pork barrel” scam investigation hit its climax, capping off then-President Benigno Aquino’s hallmark campaign against corruption.

But as expected, the cases outlasted Aquino’s presidency, and now the political climate has changed dramatically under his successor, Rodrigo Duterte, who has been in office since 2016.

‘Grave misconduct’

Revilla, Enrile and Estrada were in the opposition during Aquino’s term. Aquino, in fact, drew criticism for only going after political opponents. Only one Aquino ally was tagged in the scandal, and the charge was a less serious “grave misconduct”.

Now, the three politicians are on the side of the ruling power, and are running again for the Senate in May’s midterm polls under parties directly or indirectly allied with Duterte.

Sara Duterte-Carpio, the president’s influential daughter, is endorsing Revilla’s candidacy.

Duterte has shown a propensity for doing political favours for his allies while dealing tough blows on his opponents.

For instance, he set his cabinet and his allies in Congress against Senator Leila De Lima, who investigated and strongly criticised his war on drugs. In February 2017, after a humiliating public probe into her personal affairs, she was arrested on illegal drug charges based on testimonies from convicted drug traffickers.

Meanwhile, in November 2016, he permitted a hero’s burial for Marcos, who siphoned off at least $5bn in public funds and saw to the killings of more than 3,000 activists and dissidents during his 21-year rule.

A month earlier, Duterte let slip in a public address that Marcos’s daughter, Imee, donated money to his presidential campaign. Imee Marcos denied it. She is now running for senator, too, under Duterte-Carpio’s political coalition.