GR 112584; (May, 1997) (Digest)
G.R. No. 112584 May 23, 1997
DOMINGO INGCO, ERNESTO MAGBOO and HERMINIO ALCASID, petitioners, vs. SANDIGANBAYAN, respondent.
FACTS
Petitioners Domingo Ingco (a former PNB Vice-President), Ernesto Magboo, and Herminio Alcasid (corporate officers of Cresta Monte Shipping Corporation) were charged before the Sandiganbayan with violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (R.A. No. 3019). The charges stemmed from two loan accommodations PNB extended to Cresta Monte in 1977 and 1978, which were guaranteed by the National Investment and Development Corporation (NIDC), a PNB subsidiary. The prosecution alleged the loans were “behest,” approved without proper feasibility studies and with deficient collateral, causing undue injury to the government. Petitioners filed a motion to quash the information, arguing the offenses had prescribed and that the facts alleged did not constitute a violation of the law. The Sandiganbayan denied their motion and subsequent motion for reconsideration.
ISSUE
The primary issue is whether the Sandiganbayan committed grave abuse of discretion in denying the motion to quash, specifically on the grounds of prescription and failure of the information to allege facts constituting an offense under R.A. No. 3019.
RULING
The Supreme Court granted the petition, ruling that the Sandiganbayan committed grave abuse of discretion. On prescription, the Court held the fifteen-year prescriptive period under the amended law (B.P. Blg. 195) did not apply retroactively. The offenses allegedly committed in 1977-1978 were governed by the original ten-year prescriptive period under R.A. No. 3019. The period commenced from the alleged commission of the acts. Even reckoning from the filing of the complaint with the Presidential Blue Ribbon Committee on May 26, 1987, more than ten years had elapsed by the time the information was filed on July 21, 1993. Thus, the crimes had prescribed.
More critically, the Court found the information failed to allege facts constituting a violation of Section 3(e) or (g) of R.A. No. 3019. For Ingco, a public officer, the allegations at most indicated an error of judgment in recommending the loans, not the manifest partiality, evident bad faith, or gross negligence required by the law. The approval ultimately rested with the PNB Board, which was under no compulsion to follow his recommendation. For private individuals Magboo and Alcasid, they could not be independently prosecuted under the Anti-Graft Law, which primarily targets public officers. The Sandiganbayan’s insistence on proceeding with a fatally defective information constituted an evasion of a positive duty and a virtual refusal to perform a duty enjoined by law, amounting to grave abuse of discretion. The resolutions were set aside.