Sabio admits his brother, PCGG chair, tried to influence him in Meralco case
abs-cbnNEWS.com | 08/11/2008 4:27 PM
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Tables were turned in the third hearing today on the alleged P10 million-bribe offer of purported Meralco emissary Francis Roa de Borja to Justice Jose Sabio Jr. as the latter admitted that his brother and current Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) head Camilo Sabio called him to ask him to decide in favor of government.
Sabio, in the affidavit he submitted last August 7, said that his brother called him on May 30 at 8:00 am to inform him that he is the third member of the Special 9th Division which would handle the Meralco-GSIS case. (See full text of Sabio’s affidavit in Research section)
“He then said that he heard that a TRO was already prepared. At this point, he then tried to convince me of the rightness of the stand of GSIS and SEC,” he wrote.
Meralco and the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) are caught in a legal row over the contentious proxy validation held last May 27, where the Lopez group kept control of the power utility. GSIS asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to quash the boardroom elections.
Sabio also revealed, under questioning, that his brother called him even before the temporary restraining order was issued on May 30.
We called PCGG Chairman Sabio’s office to get his side but he was in a meeting. We tried calling his cell phone but we couldn’t reach him.
Criminal act?
Retired Justice Romeo Callejo, a member of the investigation panel along with retired Justices Flerida Romero and Carolina Griño-Aquino quizzed Sabio on why he did not report such matter immediately to CA Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez.
“You’ve been a professor of judicial ethics. Don’t you think that his attempt to influence you not to issue the TRO is unethical?”
“It is,” Sabio answered.
When pressed, however, if his brother’s call constituted “a criminal act,” the acting chair of the 9th Division which issued the TRO said that “there was no bribe made.”
Callejo, however, said that in the Revised Penal Code, there’s “no need” for an act of bribery in order to charge a public official of misconduct.
He then challenged the magistrate, who earlier said that he (Sabio) would file a criminal case against de Borja for the latter’s alleged bribe offer to him, to also consider the illegality that may have been committed in his brother’s call.
‘Walls have ears’
The PCGG chair’s name first came up when Vitalliano Aguirre II, counsel for Justice Bienvenido Reyes, who is currently confined at the Capitol Medical City due to a heart ailment, asked Justice Sabio during his cross-examination how his brother could know the results of the re-raffle of the Meralco-GSIS case at 8:00 am when a raffle is usually conducted at a later hour.
“The call was made at 8:00 a.m. What time is the raffle of cases usually held?” Aguirre asked.
“10 a.m.,” Sabio answered.
“How could your brother know that you were assigned as member of the Special 9th Division when the raffle was made only at 10 am?” Aguirre probed, to which Sabio said “that you have to summon my brother [to answer] that.”
When asked, however, if he inquired how his brother got hold of the said information on the members of the hearing division on the Meralco-GSIS case, Sabio responded, “Walls have ears.”
Sabio’s answer piqued Romero, who commented that his answer reflected his trivialization of the matter.
“That attitude bothers me,” the retired Supreme Court justice said. “Is this really something you and the justices in the Court of Appeals take in stride? That’s life, something like that?”
Sabio differed and said that he could only speak for himself, and not for the whole appellate court.
Roxas vs Sabio
Meanwhile, Justice Vicente Roxas, ponente of the July 24 decision which junked the SEC cease-and-desist order against Meralco, bewailed in his reply-affidavit today that Sabio did not inform him of De Borja’s alleged bribery attempt.
“Justice Sabio shirked in that duty to let the ponente Justice Roxas know of the criminal act allegedly done to him so that the ponente could take immediate steps to protect the integrity of the ponencia,” he wrote.
“Why did you not inform me? I am the ponente of the decision,” he asked during his cross-examination of Sabio.
Sabio said that he sent him a text message on July 11 requesting for a meeting but Roxas did not reply. “That’s when I wanted to tell you,” Sabio explained, adding that Roxas has made himself “scarce” since then.
Roxas also asked Sabio, whom he said he looked up to as a father because of his seniority and later designation as acting chair of the 9th Division, if he berated him when he reportedly personally carried the TRO to Sabio’s chambers on May 30.
In his affidavit, Sabio said that Roxas asked him to sign the TRO he personally brought to his office on May 30 because of its “urgency.”
Sabio answered “no,” to which Roxas added that the contested TRO got the former’s approval because it contained the date of the oral arguments – June 23 and 24 – that Sabio specified.
Sabio assailed him, however, saying that the oral arguments have only been incorporated after their said meeting on May 30.
Roxas went on to ask why Sabio was angry at him, adding that such bothered him “because I am like a son and you are a like to a father to me.” The older magistrate said that he sowed no hatred against the junior member of the former Special 9th Division, only that he is concerned about the reputation of the Court of Appeals.
Sabio’s daughter
While Sabio’s older brother, Camilo, was thrown into the spotlight because of his “improper” call, Sabio’s daughters were also mentioned in his cross-examination.
Romero brought up Sabio’s July 8 handwritten letter to Chief Justice Reynato Puno, where the embattled magistrate asked for a meeting with Puno to “unburden” himself on the Meralco-GSIS case.
The letter was reportedly hand carried by Sabio’s daughter, Silvia Jo Sabio, who works in Puno’s office.
Romero criticized the said letter as a form of bypassing Vasquez. She said that Sabio should have first raised the issue with the presiding justice in an official manner before bringing it up to the chief justice.
Sabio replied, however, that it was “My daughter’s idea, not mine.”
He explained that his daughter acted on her own and sent the letter to Puno because the purported bribery greatly aggrieved her.
He added that his daughter consulted SC spokesman Jose Midas Marquez, who advised her to write to Puno.
When asked what was the rationale behind such advice, Marquez told abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak that “she told me that her father has to talk to Chief Justice Puno. ..I told her to report it to the Chief Justice in writing.”
