Thursday, April 24, 2008 Arraignment of Perez, 3 others for extortion set
THE Sandiganbayan First Division has summoned former justice secretary Hernando Perez and his three co-accused to appear in the May 16's arraignment of one of the criminal charges filed against them by the Office of the Ombudsman.
Presiding Justice Diosdado Peralta, the division chairman, signed the order requiring Perez, his wife Rosario, brother-in-law Ramon Arceo and business associate Ernest Escaler, to submit their plea on a graft case, which stemmed from the US$2-million extortion charge of former Manila congressman Mark Jimenez.
Without a restraining order from the Supreme Court (SC), the First Division is unlikely to defer the arraignment.
On Tuesday, the Perez couple moved to suspend the proceedings in their criminal charges pending the SC resolution on their petition for certiorari with prayer for the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) filed last week.
The Perezes, in the petition with the SC, accused the Ombudsman of acting in excess of its jurisdiction and abused their right to procedural due process when it immediately recommended the filing of criminal charges against them after sitting on the case for five years since 2002.
Besides the graft case in the First Division, the Perez couple and the two other accused are charged with robbery, which was assigned to the anti-graft court's Second Division.
The ombudsman also filed another graft charge and a case for falsification of public documents against Perez alone. The cases were raffled off to the Third and Fourth Divisions, respectively.
The anti-graft body recommended that bail be set at P178,000 for Perez and P130,000 each for his wife, Arceo and Escaler.
The filing of the cases was approved by Ombudsman Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez, who had served as one of Perez's undersecretaries at the Department of Justice (DOJ). (Sunnex)
