EDITORIAL - Don’t take too long

Time not only heals all wounds. In the case of criminal activities, time allows crooks to get away with ill-gotten wealth, makes witnesses change their minds and vanish, and gives crooks an opportunity to bury evidence. In the case of a murder victim, time allows decomposition to set in so identification becomes nearly impossible, or allows sharks to finish off the corpus delicti.

The nation has seen how the passage of time makes it tougher to recover ill-gotten wealth. Only the Presidential Commission on Good Government, whose existence depends on the hunt for Marcos wealth, still harbors hopes of recovering the family’s billions. The ranking military officers who could have identified the mastermind in the 1983 assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. are all dead, leaving only the foot soldiers to languish in the national penitentiary.

Even with lessons learned from the Marcos case, however, people power II was simply too unexpected. The tumult of those momentous days last month allowed several key personalities to flee, among them former gaming consultant Charlie "Atong" Ang, businessman Jaime Dichaves and auditor Yolanda Ricaforte. The government managed to freeze a multimillion-dollar bank account of deposed president Joseph Estrada, but what about the rest of the assets?

A freeze order can be issued only by the courts. Graft and plunder charges against Estrada, however, are still with the Department of Justice and the Ombudsman. After those weeks of Estrada’s impeachment trial, how long before prosecutors and the Ombudsman find prima facie evidence to warrant the filing of a case in court?

The House prosecution panel has turned over all evidence in the impeachment trial to prosecutors. The Senate has formally closed the impeachment trial while the Supreme Court has refused to stop the Ombudsman from conducting its preliminary investigation of Estrada. So what’s taking so long? Can’t the cases be filed one at a time if research and evidence gathering aren’t completed yet?

True, prosecutors must present an air-tight case against Estrada – the nation can’t afford to lose this one. But this must be balanced with other risks. The other day, justice officials and several groups pushed for a freeze on Estrada’s assets, valued at around P20 billion – P10 billion deposited in banks and another P10 billion in mansions and other properties – in preparation for the government’s seizure of the assets. Prosecutors better make sure that by the time a freeze order is issued, there will still be assets left to freeze.