Woman wants dismissal of estafa case overturned

The wife of a retired general who claimed she was swindled more than P9 million by a woman who lured her into a business partnership has asked the Cebu City Prosecutor's Office to reconsider the dismissal of the estafa case she filed against the suspect.

Corazon Flores, through counsel Rory John Sepulveda, assailed the dismissal of the case she filed against Jonalyn Anodan on the ground that the prosecutor allegedly erred in his findings.

Flores said that assistant city prosecutor Mario Edgardo Montenegro failed to appreciate the rule laid on a Supreme Court decision where he based his resolution dismissing the case against Anodan. Montenegro, in a resolution dated February 28, dismissed the case against Anodan on the ground that business partners are not liable for estafa.

Montenegro cited the Clarin case in Pampanga wherein the higher court held that partners are not liable for estafa of money or property received for the partnership when the business commenced and profits accrued. According to Montenegro, the action should not be criminal, but a civil one arising from the partnership contract for a liquidation of the partnership and a levy on its assets if there should be any.

However, Flores said that the facts of the cited case are totally different from that of their transaction because there was no partnership between her and Anodan.

She said that Anodan deceived her by means of false pretenses, which is clearly a violation of Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code. Anodan uses fictitious name, falsely pretended to possess power, influence, qualifications, property, credit, agency, business or imaginary transactions.

Later on, she learned that the latter is not actually supplying fresh mangoes to the companies she claimed. She then went to the National Bureau of Investigation, which assisted her and filed the case against Anodan. - Fred P. Languido