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GOVERNMENT prosecutors on Tuesday revived their fight
against deposed President Joseph “Erap” Estrada by
asking the First Division of the Sandiganbayan to begin
its trial on the perjury charges against the former
President.
Deputy
Special Prosecutor Robert Kallos and directors Raymundo
Julio Olaguer and John Turalba said Estrada’s perjury
case remains active even though he has been
convicted—and pardoned—of convictions in the plunder,
other perjury and illegal use of aliases tried by the
Special Division.
The
prosecutors pointed out that what was included in the
joint trial was Criminal Case No. 26905, a perjury case
concerning alleged misrepresentations in Estrada’s 1998
statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN).
The
perjury case pending at the First Division is Criminal
Case 26564 concerning Estrada’s 1999 SALN.
“The
People are ready, willing and able to continue the
prosecution of the case at bar which has not even been
subject of final resolution by this Honorable Court’s
First Division and remains pending herein after
arraignment and pretrial,” the prosecutors said in
their motion dated June 13, 2008.
Proceedings in the case got bogged in legal quagmire in
November 2001 after the late Presiding Justice Francis
Garchitorena, then chairman of the First Division,
barred documentary evidence on the ground that
prosecutors failed to enumerate them in the list they
submitted during pretrial conference.
The
evidence supposedly consists of banking papers showing
that Estrada maintained two deposit accounts containing
at least P74 million when he declared a net worth of
only P35 million, including noncash assets.
Former
senator Rene Saguisag, colead counsel for Estrada at the
time, declared the case “dead in the water” after
Garchitorena’s ruling.
Instead
of proceeding with the trial, prosecutors challenged the
ruling through a petition for certiorari at the Supreme
Court and in a minute resolution dated September 18,
2007, the High Court ruled the petition has become “moot
and academic” in light of Estrada’s acquittal for
perjury by the Sandiganbayan Special Division.
“With
all due respect to the Honorable Supreme Court, the case
of perjury wherein accused Joseph Ejercito Estrada was
acquitted by this Honorable Court, Special Division, is
Criminal Case No. 26905,” the prosecutors pointed out.
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