Marcos wealth informant’s bid to collect reward junked

MANILA, Philippines — The Sandiganbayan has denied the bid of self-proclaimed “confidential informant” Danilo Lihaylihay to collect P29.58 billion from the government as his reward for his role in the recovery of ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family.

In a resolution dated April 15 and obtained by reporters yesterday, the Sandiganbayan’s Seventh Division denied Lihaylihay’s petition for the court to issue a mandamus order, which would have compelled Bureau of Internal Revenue commissioner Caesar Dulay to pay him P29.58 billion.

In his petition, Lihaylihay claimed that he is entitled to “informer’s reward” for the supposed confidential information that he relayed to authorities, which supposedly resulted in the garnishment and recovery of the “properties, assets and monies” of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, former first lady Imelda Marcos, and their cronies.

Lihaylihay specifically cited the discovery of the Marcoses’ alleged ill-gotten money deposited in their accounts with Land Bank of the Philippines, Philippine National Bank-Trust Banking Group as well as the those recovered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) from their Swiss bank accounts.

In its ruling, however, the anti-graft court Seventh Division said that under Presidential Decree 1606 or the Sandiganbayan charter, the anti-graft court’s jurisdiction when it comes to petition for mandamus is appellate in nature and only extends over the regional trial courts.

“Considering that PD 1606 as amended does not give the Sandiganbayan any appellate jurisdiction over the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the exercise of the latter’s executive/administrative function regarding requests for payment of informer’s reward, the instant petition is hereby dismissed for lack of jurisdiction on the part of this Court,” the Seventh Division’s ruling read.

In September last year, the Supreme Court (SC) had also denied Lihaylihay’s petition for mandamus in his bid to get P12 trillion in reward from the government, still in connection with the recovery of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth.

In support of his petition, Lihaylihay presented before the high tribunal two letters he sent to then Bureau of Internal Revenue-Presidential Commission on Good Government head Eliseo Pitargue in March 1987 supposedly revealing the locations of the Marcos wealth.

In its ruling, however, the SC said Lihaylihay’s letters only stressed the need to recover the ill-gotten wealth with broad claims of the wealth’s whereabouts.

The SC said Lihaylihay also failed to prove that his supposed confidential information became the government’s primary basis for the prosecution of the Marcoses and the recovery of their ill-gotten wealth.

“From his 1987 letters to the present petition, his bases for rewards swelled from the Swiss bank deposits, gold bars and diamonds mentioned in his original letters to Atty. Pitargue to virtually all forms of the Marcos family’s ill-gotten wealth,” the SC’s decision read.