Ex-magistrate who reduced charges of general accused of plunder now Ombudsman’s top prosecutor

A FORMER top magistrate of the Sandiganbayan who reduced charges of a general accused of plunder is now the Ombudsman’s top prosecutor.

The Office of the Ombudsman confirmed on Friday that former Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Edilberto G. Sandoval has been appointed as the head of its Office of the Special Prosecutor.

“SP Edilberto Sandoval assumed office on Wednesday,” Ombudsman Public Information and Media Relations Bureau head Atty. Mary Rawnsle V. Lopez told reporters in a mobile phone message on Friday.

Mr. Sandoval served as an anti-graft court associate justice starting 1996 until he was appointed by former President Benigno S. C. Aquino III as Sandiganbayan presiding justice in 2010.

Mr. Sandoval retired in 2011 and became a full time criminal law professor. He replaced former SP Wendell Barreras-Sulit.

During his tenure as anti-graft court’s top magistrate, a resolution approving the plea-bargaining agreement that reduced plunder charges against retired general Carlos F. Garcia to bribery and money laundering.

Mr. Sandoval, former Sandiganbayan Associate Justice and now Supreme Court Justice Samuel S. Martires concurred with the resolution penned by former Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Teresita Diaz-Baldos.

In 2011, Ms. Baldos and Messrs. Martires and Sandoval were ordered investigated by then-Justice secretary and now detained Senator Leila M. de Lima, after then party-list representative and now Senator Ana Theresia Hontiveros-Baraquel and others accused the three Sandiganbayan Justices of issuing an unjust interlocutory order approving the plea-bargaining agreement.

A special prosecutor has a fixed term of seven years. — Raynan F. Javil