Carpio: Ombudsman can still revive Villanueva case

Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said Thursday the Office of the Ombudsman may still revive the controversial 2019 ruling that reversed a 2016 dismissal order against Sen. Joel Villanueva, if due process was not properly observed.

Villanueva was ordered dismissed from public service by then Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales in 2016 but he was cleared in 2019 by   Ombudsman Samuel Martires in what current Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla recently called a “secret decision.”

“If indeed the prosecutor did not receive a copy of the reversal, then he can still ask for a copy of the reversal and submit his motion for reconsideration because that is the right of the prosecution,” Carpio said in an interview.

He added that if Martires deliberately kept the decision private and failed to inform the prosecution — thus preventing it from filing a motion for reconsideration — then due process may have been violated.

“It appears nobody knew about that reversal. So, most likely, the prosecutor, whoever the prosecutor was then, did not also know so he could not have filed a motion for reconsideration,” he said.

Atty. Rico Domingo, former president of the Philippine Bar Association and chairperson of the Movement Against Disinformation, said the reopening of Villanueva’s case would not constitute double jeopardy because it was never elevated to the Sandiganbayan.

Domingo explained that since Martires granted Villanueva’s motion for reconsideration, which effectively cleared him of the charges, the case did not go to trial. “Villanueva would not be able to invoke the doctrine of double jeopardy,” he said.

Morales’s 2016 ruling found Villanueva guilty of grave misconduct, serious dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the interest of the service over his alleged misuse of P10 million in pork barrel funds in 2008, when he was the CIBAC party-list representative. 

The decision carried the penalty of perpetual disqualification from public office.

The case resurfaced after Remulla asked the Senate to enforce the 2016 dismissal, only to discover that Martires had reversed it in 2019.

“This office finds cogent basis to reconsider its questioned Resolution of 15 July 2016. In fact, there is no probable cause against Villanueva as it was not shown that he was actually involved in the embezzlement of the P9,700,000 in public funds,” Martires’s 2019 decision stated.

It added that Villanueva’s signature on the acceptance reports for the distribution of agribusiness materials “was obviously” forged.

Martires said that Villanueva filed his motion for reconsideration within the required 10-day period, but it was not immediately acted upon because the department concerned failed to inform Morales.

He dismissed allegations the reversal was done in secret, calling it a “deliberate effort to divert public attention from the anomalies in the flood control projects involving members of Congress, including allies of President Marcos Jr.”