Juan Ponce Enrile, Janet Napoles acquitted of graft in PDAF scam

The Sandiganbayan 3rd Division has acquitted Juan Ponce Enrile and Janet Napoles of 15 counts of graft in the pork barrel scam.

The Philippine STAR reported that Enrile's former chief-of-staff Gigi Reyes and more than 40 others have also been cleared in the case on Friday, Oct. 24.

The scam involves the officials' alleged misuse of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or popularly called pork barrel, a lump-sum discretionary fund given to congressmen to spend on priority projects that are mostly on the national level. In it, lawmakers gave their pork barrel to an implementing agency, which then transferred it to Napoles' alleged fake non-government organizations.

In 2014, the Ombudsman filed plunder cases against Enrile, Reyes, and Napoles, the scam's alleged mastermind.

Enrile was accused of amassing P172 million from his PDAF via Reyes from 2004 to 2010.

In 2018, Sandiganbayan found Napoles guilty of plunder in another case involving Sen. Bong Revilla's pork barrel fund. She's also serving her sentence for bribery and other charges related to other lawmakers' pork barrel scam cases.

But last July, the court acquitted Napoles of graft involving alleged misuse of a lawmaker's PDAF worth P15 million. (Plunder involves pocketing over P50 million, else it's graft. The former can lead up to 40 years imprisonment with no bail, while the latter can lead up to 10 years imprisonment with bail.)

The following month, Napoles was sentenced to up to 55 years in prison over the misuse of P7.55 million in the pork barrel of Davao del Sur Vice Gov. Marc Douglas Cagas IV.

Another lawmaker, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, faced a plunder charge but Sandiganbayan acquitted him of it last January. The court, then, convicted Estrada of the lesser offense, bribery, on three counts—but only initially. Last August, the court's fifth special division granted his motion for reconsideration, clearing him in his pork barrel scam case.