MANILA, Philippines – Two top officials of the Philippine National Police (PNP) were sentenced to a total of 52 years each in jail by the Court of Appeals (CA) after they were found guilty of bribery and graft for facilitating the release in 1999 of two arrested Hong Kong “drug lords” in exchange for the equivalent of $13,000 in cash.
In imposing the penalties, the CA upheld the decision of the Regional Trial Court of suburban Quezon City, Metro Manila, which convicted Superintendent Francisco Ovila and Senior Inspector Edwin Misador for the same offense.
Ovila and Misador were to serve 52 years imprisonment each, which was divided into 40 years for qualified bribery and 12 years for violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
But the CA quashed the death sentences imposed by the lower court on Ovila and Misador for lack of aggravating circumstance.
But even if the CA had upheld their death sentences, this penalty could no longer be implemented because it was abolished in 2003 by the Philippine Congress and replaced with life imprisonment.
In the same decision, the CA also affirmed the conviction of four other policemen, who were all subordinates of Ovila and Misador, for qualified bribery and graft
As accomplices, the four policemen were sentenced to a total of 27 years imprisonment each – 15 years for bribery and 12 years for graft.
Court records showed that when they committed the criminal offenses, Ovila headed a police district station in Quezon City, with Misador as his deputy and the four policemen as their subordinates.
The records also showed the charges were filed after the convicted policemen conducted a buy-bust operation on August 22, 1999, which led to the arrest of two suspected major Hong Kong drug dealers, identified as Jimmy Tan and Albert Koo.
The lawmen seized from Tan and Koo more than one kilogram of shabu, the illegal drug of choice among Filipino drug addicts and also known as “ice” and the “poor man’s cocaine.”
According to the complaints, Ovila and Misador released Tan and Koo several hours after their arrest in exchange for $13,000 in cash.
In a separate but related development, the Quezon City lower court convicted a police officer and his cousin to a maximum of 12 years in prison each for the killing of a traffic policeman in 2005.
Aside from their conviction for homicide, the court also ordered Superintendent Jose Santos and his cousin, Christian Bague, a tricycle driver, to pay the heirs of the victim $6,000 in damages.
The two were accused of shooting to death Special Police Officer 1 Luis Caparroso, a traffic policeman who arrested and confiscated the driver’s license of Bague in a district in Quezon City in June 2005.
At the time of the killing, court records said that Santos was assigned to the police provincial office of Ilocos Norte in Northern Luzon.
The two were originally charged with murder but the court reduced the offense to homicide, saying that the killing was not attended by treachery.
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tangina nyo! xana makl0ng na yang bague na yan!bwiissiiit!! SALOT!