The Sandiganbayan has cleared two ex-Iligan City Hall officials of graft and estafa charges for allegedly tampering the daily time records (DTRs) of its employees to bloat their salaries.

In a 55-page ruling promulgated on 15 April, the anti-graft court Fourth Division reversed the decision of the Regional Trial Court Branch 6 in Iligan City, convicting acting city human resource officer Ophelia Cayaco and human resource management officer Danilo Iglupas of one count of graft and eight counts of estafa through falsification of public documents.

The court ruled that the RTC failed to establish that Cayaco and Iglupas were guilty of gross inexcusable negligence and acted with evident bad faith, which is the crux of a charge for violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (R. A. 3019).

Cayaco, Iglupas, and their co-accused city human resource management officer Ilpa Acapulco, which remained at large, were indicted by the Ombudsman in Mindanao in April 2011 for allegedly acting in cahoots to defraud the government of P112,841.57.

The RTC found alterations or tampered entries in CHRMO's DTRs, particularly the bloated amounts of their overtime claim.

Graft investigators said the three local officials prepared the December 2007 overtime payroll and took advantage of their positions, conspiring with one another to falsify the employees' DTRs.

Cayaco and Iglupas, however, reasoned to the Sandiganbayan that they merely performed their official duties in good faith without criminal intent.

The two also took issue with the prosecution's lack of evidence to establish their complicity by proof beyond reasonable doubt, as well as its failure to prove the presence of conspiracy with the alleged perpetrator of the offense charged.

In absolving Cayaco and Iglupas, the Sandiganbayan said there was "no convincing evidence" on the part of investigators to give a unifying purpose that the two were animated by corrupt or ill motives in performing their official functions, such as, among others, that they took hold of the money, and converted it to their personal benefit.

"Without proof of intentionality and assent of minds, the court cannot conclude that they conspired towards the accomplishment of some unlawful objective or common design. Conspiracy must be established, not by conjecture, but by positive and conclusive evidence," it said.

The prosecution also fell short of convincing the Sandiganbayan that Cayaco and Iglupas acted with a palpably and patently fraudulent and dishonest purpose, which is tantamount to "evident bad faith," which R. A. 3019 seeks to punish.

"It was not shown that accused appellants actually profited from the release of the bloated overtime pay. Neither was it proven that they unlawfully intended other persons to benefit therefrom," the court added.

The Sandiganbayan justified its decision saying, "it would be better to set free ten men who might be probably guilty of the crime charged than to convict one innocent man for a crime he did not commit."