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Thursday, August 24, 2006
Prosecutor faces suspension
By Karlon N. Rama
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
The anti-graft court has ordered the preventive suspension of an assistant prosecutor, as it investigates his alleged involvement in the loss of over 200 grams of shabu from the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor.
City Prosecutor Nicolas Sellon, in a memorandum dated Aug. 15, 2006, implemented the suspension that mandates Assistant City Prosecutor Rosendo Brillantes to “cease and desist from further performing and/or exercising the functions, duties and privileges” of the position for the next three months.
The memorandum took effect last Aug. 16 and will remain valid until Nov. 13.
In the interim, Brillantes is barred from “conducting preliminary investigation or inquest proceedings, attending court trials and administering oaths.”
“I would rather keep things to myself,” Brillantes said when Sun.Star Cebu requested an interview yesterday.
2001 raid
He was suspended by his mother agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ), as an administrative penalty for the same offense in 2003.
The shabu, worth over P300,000 in 2001, was seized in a raid from Ma. Luisa “Bebot Tabar” Arriesgado last May 23, 2000.
She got charged before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) together with her son, Allan.
The evidence was entrusted first to Assistant City Prosecutor Rustico Paderanga but was later endorsed to Brillantes, who took over Paderanga’s court assignment when the latter went on leave.
And when the case was finally endorsed to then assistant city prosecutor Leonardo Carreon, now a judge of the Municipal Trial Court in Cities, no shabu could be found.
Released
RTC Judge Raphael Yrastorza, in a ruling promulgated in October 2001, ordered the charges dismissed, citing the insufficiency of the prosecution’s evidence. He had the Arriesgados released from jail.
Brillantes, while Carreon was still vainly trying to prosecute the Arriesgados, executed an affidavit narrating the loss.
Brillantes recalled that he placed it in a steel cabinet in the cubicle kept by his secretary, Teresita Corocoto, and that it mysteriously vanished.
The late city prosecutor Jose Pedrosa had Brillantes investigated after the incident and the probe went all the way up to the DOJ, which ordered him administratively penalized with a three-month suspension.
Brillantes has served it.
But the case earned a criminal component when Yrastorza acquitted the Arriesgados and the Office of the Ombudsman resolved to charge him before the Sandiganbayan.
No ifs
It was the anti-graft office who filed a motion seeking the prosecutor’s preventive suspension.
“As held by the Supreme Court and aptly cited by the movant (the Office of the Special Prosecutor), once the information is found to be sufficient in form and substance, it is ministerial on the part of the court to issue a preventive suspension order and there are no ifs and buts about it,” ruled the Associate Justices Rofolfo Ponferrada, Gregory Ong and Jose Hernandez of the Sandiganbayan’s 4th Division.
Brillantes opposed the motion, saying, among other things, that the stage for the presentation of evidence in the trial against him is already over and, therefore, there is no more need for his suspension.
The Sandiganbayan, however, said the grounds “appear to be irrelevant and immaterial.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 24, 2006 issue)
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