Graft case vs Juan Ponce Enrile resumes at Sandiganbayan

MANILA, Philippines — After more than four years, the graft cases against former senator Juan Ponce Enrile will now proceed to formal trial.

The Sandiganbayan’s Third Division yesterday granted the request of the camps of Jessica Lucila Reyes and Jose Evangelista III, the former chief of staff and deputy chief of staff of Enrile, respectively, to reset the pre-trial of the cases to Jan. 11, 2019.

Lawyers of Reyes and Evangelista informed the court that they were not yet done with the marking of the voluminous documentary exhibits that they intend to present during the trial proper.

While the prosecution panel of the Office of the Ombudsman as well as the legal teams of Enrile and detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles were already done with the marking of their respective exhibits, Reyes and Evangelista’s legal counsels requested the court for additional days of pre-trial conferences to finish their markings.

Under court rules, only the properly marked documentary exhibits shall be presented during trial.

This prompted the Third Division to cancel yesterday’s scheduled pre-trial conference and reset it to Jan. 11. It is during the pre-trial conference that the court will discuss with the prosecution and the defense the issues concerning the orderly conduct of the trial proper.

The prosecution and the defense are also expected to submit during the pre-trial conference their final lists of witnesses and documentary exhibits that they intend to present during trial.

Enrile, Napoles, Reyes and Evangelista are each facing 15 counts of graft before the Third Division in connection with the pork barrel fund scam.

The accused are also facing a plunder case in connection with the same offense.

The cases were filed by the ombudsman in June 2014. The Third Division had earlier set the pre-trial of Enrile’s plunder case on Dec. 7 at 8:30 a.m.

Enrile is accused of receiving, through Reyes, a total of P172.83 million in kickbacks in exchange for the allocation of his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel to spurious non-government organizations supposedly owned by Napoles, the alleged brains of the scam.

Reyes and Napoles are currently detained at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology Female Dormitory in Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig.

Enrile, on the other hand, was released from the Philippine National Police General Hospital, where he had been under hospital arrest since June 2014 after the Supreme Court in August 2015 granted his petition for bail, which was earlier denied by the Sandiganbayan.