Office of the President orders dismissal of Ombudsman's Carandang
MANILA, Philippines — The Malacañang has ordered the dismissal of Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Carandang, who had been acccused of disclosing inforrmation about President Rodrigo Duterte and his family's bank transactions last year.
The Office of the President, in an order dated July 30 but made public on Wednesday, said that it found Carandang “liable for graft and corruption and betrayal of public trust.”
The order was signed by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea.
The case stemmed from complaints filed by lawyer Manuelito Luna, and suspended lawyer Eligio Mallari in October last year.
The two accused Carandang of corruption for causing “undue injury to any party, including the government,” as well as for giving “unwarranted benefits” through “manifest partiality” and for “divulging valuable information of a confidential character.”
The complaint involved Carandang’s media interview where he was quoted as saying that his office had already received the bank transaction record of the president’s family from 2006 to 2016 from the Anti-Money Laundering Council—a statement that was later denied by the money laundering watchdog.
Carandang on October 3 maintained that his office “has observed confidentiality” in the probe into Duterte and his family’s bank transactions.
“Carandang states that he was reading through the documents shown to him by the media during the ambush interview, in response to media’s inquiry on the status of the complaint after more than a year since its filing and in stating that a request was made to AMLC as part of the investigative process,” the statement read.
The Office of the Ombudsman has since terminated the investigation into the allegations of Duterte's undisclosed wealth.
In January, the OP has ordered a 90-day suspension against Carandang after it had found that the deputy ombudsman committed grave dishonesty for misuse of confidential information and disclosing false information, violating Section 3e of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
The OP, in its ruling in July, said that Carandang “was clearly only interested to broadcast an information adverse to the President. His keeping mum about an information that was favourable to the President clearly amounted to manifest partiality.”
Carandang’s transgression of the laws on graft and corruption, and betrayal of public trust “gravely affect his fitness to remain in public office,” said the OP.
Complaints against Deputy Ombudsman for Mindanao Rodolfo Elman and members of his fact-finding investigation unit, named as respondents by Mallari and Luna, were dismissed due to lack of substantial evidence.
Ombudsman enforcement?
The January suspension order of the OP against Carandang resulted in a tug of powers between the executive branch and the Office of the Ombudsman.
When the OP first ordered Carandang’s suspension, then Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales put her foot down and said that the Office of the Ombudsman will not enforce the suspension order.
The Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling in Jan. 28, 2014, held that Section 8(2) of The Ombudsman Act of 1989 was unconstitutional by granting discplinary jurisdiction to the president over a deputy ombudsman as it violates the independence of the Office of the Ombudsman.
Section 8(2) of RA 6770 states that "A Deputy, or the Special Prosecutor, may be removed from office by the President for any of the grounds provided for the removal of the Ombudsman, and after due process."
The ruling has already been entered into the SC’s book of judgment, deeming it final.
The Ombudsman called the OP’s suspension order “a clear affront to the SC and an impairment of the constitutionality enshrined independence of the Office of the Ombudsman.”
Morales stepped down on July 26 at the end of her seven-year term.
Taking over her post is Ombudsman Samuel Martires, Duterte’s first appointee to the high court and now the anti-graft agency.
Martires has not replied to a request for comment on whether he will enforce the dismissal order.
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