Republic Act 7080 or the Anti-Plunder Law is only two decades old and was enacted in the aftermath of the Marcos dictatorship, when then-president Ferdinand Marcos, his wife Imelda, and their cronies amassed ill-gotten wealth. After 1986, the government found that existing laws like the Anti-Graft and Corruption Practices Act were clearly inadequate to cope with the magnitude of the corruption and thievery committed during the Marcos years, said former Senator Jovito Salonga. The first-ever plunder cases were filed on August 15, 1997, when then-Commissioner Liwayway Vinzons-Chato of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) sued cashier Dominga Manalili and 6 others for two counts of plunder. Manalili and her accomplices were accused of diverting a total of P260 million of withholding tax payments of government and private employees to unauthorized bank accounts in 1996. Nearly 4 years later, in May 2001, Manalili became the first person to be convicted of plunder in the Philippines. She was then sentenced by Quezon City Regional Trial Court judge and now Supreme Court Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta to two life terms, and was ordered to return the money she stole plus all profits earned. After the abolition of the death penalty in 2006 through Republic Act 9346, the death sentence for plunder was likewise struck down. Currently, the punishment for plunder are as follows: reclusion perpetua or life imprisonment, forfeiture of ill-gotten wealth in favor of the government, and perpetual disqualification from public office. rappler/newsbreak/60139-plunder-philippines-history
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 06:47:17 +0000
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