Court acquits alleged ‘godfather’ of carjack gangs

MANILA, Philippines - A Quezon City court yesterday acquitted for charges of kidnapping with homicide a businessman whom authorities earlier tagged as the “godfather” of carjack gangs.

In a 35-page decision, Judge Eleuterio Bathan of the Regional Trial Court Branch 92 said there was reasonable doubt to absolve accused Jovel Entote of the charges filed against him over a carjacking that resulted in the death of a van driver in Quezon City three years ago.

According to ABS-CBN, Entote was reportedly the one who financed notorious carjacking syndicates like the Dominguez, Salvatierra, Bonifacio, Onad Santiago and Baktin groups, which had all been neutralized by the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) and the Highway Patrol Group (HPG) in their previous operations.

The PAOCC believes Entote is also responsible for 67 stolen cars, mostly sport utility vehicles, which the PAOCC and HPG recovered in the province of Bohol and the cities of Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro and General Santos since last year.

Bathan said Daniel Quiñanola and Joseph Balbin, parking attendants at a church on Katipunan Avenue, had different descriptions of the man who killed driver Rodolfo Petalino and carjacked the Toyota Grandia he had been driving. He also said the two men testified that a policeman used a typewriter to take their statements, but the policeman actually used a computer.

“In short, Joseph and Daniel were lying. They were not telling the truth,” he said.

Entote was arrested by the HPG and the PAOCC in Cebu City in August. According to prosecutors, authorities closed in on Entote after the Grandia was recovered in Bacolod City in October 2011.

During the trial, Norman Kho – an official of a lending company in Bacolod City – claimed he swapped a Nexus for Entote’s Grandia in September 2009, five months after the carjacking.

Entote said no document proves he ever had a transaction with Kho, and that he was with his family in Boracay at the time of the carjacking.

He also claimed that the police officers who arrested him tried to extort from him P8 million in exchange for his freedom.

In his decision, Bathan said that “while the rule of long-standing is that alibi is a weak defense, it is an equally enduring rule that the prosecution must rely on the strength of its evidence rather than on the weakness of that of the defense.”

Bathan ordered Entote’s immediate release from detention.

Meanwhile, Arsenio Evangelista of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption expressed his disappointment over the decision.

“Acquittal does not mean he did not commit the crime. The prosecution just failed to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt,” he said.

Evangelista is the father of car dealer Venson Evangelista, who died in a carjacking allegedly staged by brothers Raymond and Roger Dominguez.