GMA arraigned, court enters not guilty plea Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno’s avowed policy of “dignified silence” in the Supreme Court (SC) appeared to create confusion yesterday following a restraining order issued by the tribunal on a case involving former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo over her indictment before the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court. In a statement yesterday afternoon SC Public Information Office chief Victoria Gleoresty Guerra took back the SC office’s earlier pronouncement that the restraining order which stopped an arrest warrant issued by the court only stops the arrest of Arroyo’s co -respondent in the case, former state auditor Nilda Plaras, and not Arroyo’s. “This is to clarify that the Oct. 24, 2012 temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the Court’s Third Division in Plaras v. Sandiganbayan, enjoins the implementation of the warrant of arrest against petitioner Nilda B. Plaras as ordered in the assailed resolution of the Sandiganbayan dated Oct. 3, 2012.” the SC said. Arroyo, Plaras and eight others are facing a P365.9-million plunder case for the alleged misuse of Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) funds. Earlier in the morning the high court said Arroyo was covered by the TRO issued on the petition of her co-accused, former Commission on Audit Intelligence Fund Unit head Nilda Plaras, only to backtrack in the afternoon. In text messages to reporters, the high court’s public information office had told reporters that third division has issued a “TRO on former President GMA’s (Arroyo) arraignment before the Sandiganbayan on PCSO plunder case.” The TRO by the third division chaired by Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr. issued the TRO “as prayed for, enjoining the Sandiganbayan from implementing its assailed resolution dated Oct. 3, 2012, which ordered the issuance of an arrest warrant versus petitioner, among others, effective immediately and continuing until further orders from the Court.” The first division of the Sandiganbayan already proceeded with the hearing in the morning and entered a “not guilty” plea for Arroyo, who refused to be arraigned due to her pending petition in the SC. The anti-graft court had immediately interpreted the TRO as exclusive to Plaras, and not covering Arroyo. The high court has not yet acted on Arroyo’s petition since it went on holiday break from yesterday until Nov. 9. In her 80-page petition, Arroyo asked the high court to immediately issue a TRO stopping the trial in the anti-graft court and eventually nullify the resolutions of Sandiganbayan and Ombudsman approving the filing of charges against her for alleged grave abuse of discretion. She also invoked her “medical condition and stature as former president of the republic” in asking the SC to also immediately issue an order for her temporary release from hospital detention for humanitarian consideration A lawyer for the former president yesterday hailed the Supreme Court for issuing a TRO on the arrest warrant issued by the Sandiganbayan against Plaras in the PCSO plunder case, saying it would surely benefit the former leader and all the others accused in the same case. In a telephone interview, lawyer Raul Lambino, one of the counsels for Arroyo said that while the TRO issued by the SC is only intended to enjoin the Sandiganbayan from effecting the arrest warrant it issued against Nilda Plaras, he believes it would benefit all the others in the long run. “Ms. Nilda Plaras is being accused here as a co-conspirator in the plunder case. But with the Supreme Court issuing a TRO in her favor, stopping a collegial body from enforcing a warrant of arrest against her, it can only mean she has strong merits in her case to warrant such decision from the high court,” Lambino told the Tribune. “If Ms. Plaras would be taken out of the equation, meaning she would be dropped from the case, it would be tantamount to saying that there is nothing illegal in the credit advice she had issued as an auditor of the Commission on Audit (CoA) regarding the PCSO fund, so the disbursement of the questioned PCSO fund was legal, it was not misused and no one amassed wealth from it,” Lambino explained. Lambino said they are optimistic the SC would also grant Mrs. Arroyo’s petition on the same ground it had granted Plaras’ petition. According to Mrs. Arroyo’s counsel, they are not entering any plea as of the moment as the former President has a pending case before the SC. “We refused to enter a plea because if we did it means that we are already recognizing the Sandiganbayan’s jurisdiction over the case,” said Lambino. The former leader was accompanied by husband Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo, and children Luli Arroyo-Bernas, Camarines Sur Representative Diosdado Arroyo and Ang Galing Pinoy Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo. The anti-graft court set the preliminary conference on Dec. 3 and a pre-trial on Feb. 14, 2013. Arroyo appeared in court wheelchair-bound and wearing a neck brace. She sat quietly as Judge Efren de la Cruz read the charge that she had plundered $8.8 million dollars in state lottery funds during her time as president from 2001-2010. One of Arroyo’s lawyers, Ferdinand Topacio, said no plea was entered because her legal team had questioned the legality of charge with the Supreme Court, which had yet to issue a ruling on the motion. “This arrest, as we have said before, is illegal and baseless,” Topacio told Agence France Presse. “It is a right of anyone accused not to enter a plea.” Meanwhile, Malacañang ordered the PCSO against footing P 5 million in unpaid hospital bills for the former president. The PCSO’s stonewalling on orders of Aquino himself came despite the latter’s promise to secure world-class medical treatment for Arroyo after the palace refused to allow the latter to leave the country to seek medical attention abroad. Sources in the hospital explained that around P 5 million remains unpaid representing Arroyo’s bills. As a matter of practice, the source said a nominal number of indigent patients are paid for by PCSO for treatment at St. Luke’s to a celing amount of P300,000. At the time Arroyo was confined in the hospital, her entourage occupied the entire 15th floor of the hospital at an average price of P 100 a day per presidential suite, the source said resulting in the whopping bill at the end of her confinement. Last week a ruling by the SC upheld the government’s bid to collect P64 million in income tax deficiencyt from the posh St. Luke’s Medical Center. In a 24-page decision by Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, the second division of the high court partly reversed an earlier ruling of Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) exempting the hospital from payment of income tax for being a non-stock, non-profit corporation and SC sided with the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s ruling that proprietary hospitals like St. Luke’s are still liable for income tax. “St. Luke’s fails to meet the requirements under section 30 (e) and (g) of the National Internal Revenue Code to be completely tax exempt from all its income. St. Luke’s is therefore liable for deficiency income tax in 1998 at the preferential rate of 10 percent under Section 27 (b) being a proprietary hospital institution of the Tax Code,” it stressed. The said provision in the Tax Code enumerates organizations that are tax-exempt: non-stock corporations or associations organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, athletic, or cultural purposes, or for the rehabilitation of veterans. Section 30 (g) exempts from tax civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. “To be exempt from real property taxes, Section 28(3), Article VI of the Constitution requires that a charitable institution use the property actually, directly and exclusively for charitable purposes. To be exempt from income taxes, Section 30(E) of the NIRC requires that a charitable institution must be organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes,” the SC further explained. The SC, however, pointed out that St. Luke’s should be exempted from surcharges and interest on its tax deficiency. St. Luke’s argued that the BIR should not consider its total revenues because it gave free patient services amounting to P218,187,498 or 65.20% of its operating income of P334,642,615. The BIR argued that the hospital was actually operating for profit since only 13 percent of its revenues came from charitable purposes. BIR assessed St. Luke’s in 2002 with deficiency taxes worth P76.06 million - an amount that was reduced to P63.93 million - for 1998 when the hospital posted income of P1.73 billion from patient services. This deficiency amount included income tax, value-added tax, withholding tax on compensation and expanded withholding tax. With AFP
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:10:57 +0000
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