Sandiganbayan acquits ex-village chief of graft

The Sandiganbayan has reversed a ruling of the Butuan City Regional Trial Court that found former Barangay Dankias chairperson Adela Butcon guilty of graft for allowing the construction of a temporary shelter on a government-owned lot.

The anti-graft court’s First Division ruled that Butcon’s decision to permit Marissa Alas and her husband, Carlos, to temporarily occupy a parcel of land previously awarded by the city government to another couple was “not motivated by bad judgment nor of a palpably and patently fraudulent and dishonest purpose.”

Graft probers alleged that Butcon acted with manifest partiality and evident bad faith in allowing the Alas couple to occupy the lot, knowing that it had been awarded to spouses Harold and Ginalyn Otaza without the award having been forfeited or revoked by the city government.

The Alas couple was among seven families displaced and temporarily relocated due to the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) Riverbank Protection Project along the Agusan River.

Butcon explained that her authorization for the couple to build a temporary house on the lot was supported by a resolution filed with the city government, which appealed for prioritization of the families affected by the DPWH’s project.

She asserted that the case against her was politically motivated due to her familial relations with the Alas couple. Marissa is a relative of Butcon’s husband, Edelberto, while Carlos is related to Ginalyn.

In acquitting Butcon, the Sandiganbayan stated that evident bad faith “does not simply connote bad judgment or negligence” but involves a “palpably and patently fraudulent and dishonest purpose to do moral obliquity or conscious wrongdoing for some perverse motive or ill will.”

“This court thus finds such an act of a barangay official to not have been made in evident bad faith. Bad faith cannot be presumed,” the court ruled.

“It is not enough that the accused violated a provision of a government circular,” the court added. Moreover, the Sandiganbayan noted that the element of manifest partiality was also absent in the case.