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THE
Court of Appeals has affirmed its October 2007 decision
ordering the prosecution of the criminal case filed
against former Urban Bank officials in connection with
their multibillion-peso anomalous transactions, which
led to the bank’s closure in 2000.
In a
two-page resolution penned by Associate Justice Remedios
Salazar-Fernando, the CA’s Seventh Division held that
respondents Arsenio M. Bartolome, Corazon M. Bejasa,
Nida S. Santos, Milagros D. Santiago, Rowena E. Punsalan,
Mark D. Ching, Chulla M. Formanes, Loida Payonga and
Amalia M. Ordas, all officers of Urban Bank and its
affiliate company Urban Corp. Investments Inc. (UII),
failed to present new evidence and arguments to warrant
the reversal of the October 8, 2007, decision.
“Finding
no new matter of substance that would warrant the
modification or reversal of the decision…this Court
resolves to deny private respondents’ motion for
reconsideration for lack of merit,” the resolution
said.
The case
arose from complaints filed by the Bangko Sentral ng
Pilipinas and the Philippine Deposit Insurance
Corporation with the DOJ for four counts of estafa under
Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code, involving alleged
illegal disbursements of P4.5 billion in funds and
violation of banking laws.
UBI
officers were charged with conspiring to misappropriate
the funds of UBI through the purchase of doubtful and
substandard receivables from UII, to the prejudice of
UBI, its stockholders, creditors and depositors.
In its
October 2007 decision, the appellate court’s Seventh
Division granted the petition filed by the government
seeking to reverse and set aside the June 20, 2006 and
October 30, 2006 decisions of Judge Reynaldo Laigo, of the
Regional
Trial Court of Makati City, ordering the dismissal of
the complaints due to DOJ’s failure to charge an offense
against them.
The CA
held that the sufficiency of the informations filed
against the respondents had already been settled by the
finding of probable cause by the DOJ panel of
prosecutors, the Secretary of Justice and the other
Makati court judges who initially handled the cases.
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