CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The chief legal counsel of arrested businessman Delfin Lee entered no plea during his client’s arraignment before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 42 here on charges of syndicated estafa on the premise that the case had already been validly junked by the Court of Appeals (CA) in November last year.
In an interview with Punto, layer Willie Rivera said that he instead filed before the Court of Appeals (CA) a habeas corpus petition that also sought an order for the RTC here to cancel its “commitment order” against his client.
“We are not entering any plea since the Court of Appeals had already dismissed his case and quashed the RTC’s arrest warrant,” Rivera said. Rivera said he was taken aback by Lee’s arrest on allegations that he defrauded members of the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag- IBIG Fund) of some P6.7 billion in Lee housing loans used in Lee’s Globe Asiatique’s projects in Bacolor and Mabalacat towns in Pampanga from 2008 to 2011.
He said that only last January in reply to a query from Lee’s legal counsels, PNP Director General Allan Purisima even wrote the counsels to assure them that the police had no plans to arrest Lee. “Purisima said he was honoring the CA decision that also quashed the arrest warrant against Lee,” he noted.
On May 22, 2012, Judge Maria Amifaith Fider-Reyes of RTC Branch 42 here issued a warrant for the arrest of Lee, his son Dexter and three officers of Globe Asiatique for syndicated estafa, a nonbailable crime, in connection with two housing projects.
Rivera, however, noted that the CA later dismissed Lee’s criminal case and told the RTC to rescind the arrest order.
Earlier, a civil case also against Lee in connection with the estafa case had also been dismissed by the Pasay City RTC.. “Even constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas has stated that an arrest warrant issued by the CA is immediately executory because the law provides that the rights and liberty of the accused, and the principle of presumption of innocence are paramount, as against the power of the state,” he explained.
He lamented the claim of Malacanang that the arrest was legal on the basis of the RTC’s failure to lift the arrest order, as well as Lee’s case being on appeal before the Supreme Court. “This has deprived the CA of any value.
It means that any decision of the CA should be ignored, so that RTC actions on appeal jump directly to the Supreme Court and skip altogether the appellate court,” he noted. Rivera also expressed objection to the proposal of Vice Pres. Jejomar Binay to transfer Lee from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) detention cell here to the provincial jail in the next block of the Capitol compound here.
“Lee’s case has become too high profile. His safety cannot be guaranteed in the provincial jail,” he stressed
