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Wednesday, October 02, 2002
2 DENR execs enter not guilty plea for graft
By Ernie N. Olson Jr.
A RANKING official of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources on Tuesday, who was arrested in an entrapment operation by the National Bureau of Investigation pleaded not guilty to graft and corruption charges before the city's Regional Trial Court Branch 6.
Engineer Juancho Tagnipis, deputy regional chief of the DENR's Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program secretariat in the Cordilleras, was charged the same day he was arrested for alleged violation of Republic Act 3019 or the Anti-graft and Corrupt Practices Law.
This resulted after a private practicing geodetic engineer and subdivision developer, Marcos de Guzman Dacanay, 37, who resides in Santiago City, Isabela, reported to the NBI that Tagnipis was allegedly extorting P20,000 from him in exchange for the processing of documents.
RTC 6 Presiding Judge Ruben Ayson, in yesterday's arraignment proceedings, set the schedule for the pre-trial of the case filed against Tagnipis, docketed under Criminal Case No. 20451-R, for 8:30 a.m. of October 21.
Assistant Prosecutor Evelyn Tagudar, one of those assigned to the case, revealed that another charge of alleged robbery, docketed under CC# 20452 R, was deferred pending further study.
"The case arraigned this morning will continue to be heard, but the second case for robbery would be studied first to ascertain whether it should be considered as a separate case or whether it would be included instead with the first case," Tagudar explained to this reporter.
This was confirmed by an order issued by Ayson yesterday, where he stated that, "The arraignment of the accused Juancho Tagnipis in the case of robbery is deferred so that the City Prosecutor's Office, through the trial prosecutor, should study first whether this case of robbery is actually included in the charge for anti-graft, and the appropriate withdrawal of the information for robbery may be made thereafter."
But he added that "if the Prosecutor's Office feels that they can also pursue a separate case of robbery against the accused in addition to the case for anti-graft, then they should make the proper manifestation hereafter so that the arraignment (for the separate robbery case) will be scheduled.
It was reported earlier that Tagnipis was arrested by a team composed of agents assigned to the NBI Intelligence & Special Operations Division, NBI Intelligence Service and the NBI regional office in the Cordilleras led by lawyers Rickson Chiong and Oscar Embido at around 9:00 a.m. of August 9 after he allegedly demanded for P20,000 from Dacanay.
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