MANILA: Veteran Philippine politician Juan Ponce Enrile, a top aide of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, was on Friday acquitted of charges he plundered three million dollars from state coffers, a court ruling showed.
The former senator and ex-defence minister, now 100 and one of the country’s most prominent politicians, was declared not guilty of the crime of plunder, defined as large-scale corruption, after a trial lasting 10 years.
Prosecutors had alleged he and other defendants took 172 million pesos ($3 million) in public funds that were allegedly diverted to ghost projects, a crime punishable by life imprisonment.
“After due consideration, the court finds that the prosecution failed to prove the guilt of accused Enrile... of the offence charged beyond reasonable doubt,“ said the Sandiganbayan court, which handles graft cases involving officials.
Two other defendants were also acquitted on Friday, an aide to Enrile and another person who had been accused of involvement in the graft.
“I knew all along that I will be acquitted because... we haven’t done anything in this case. I hope the people who filed those cases against us will examine their conscience,“ Enrile told reporters after his acquittal.
He was the long-time defence minister and martial-law administrator under the late former president Ferdinand Marcos Sr when he took the country under one-man rule in 1972.
But in 1986, Enrile led a military-backed bloodless “People Power” uprising that sent the Marcos family into exile in the United States.
In 2022, Enrile reconciled with the Marcos family and backed the successful presidential candidacy of Marcos’s son and namesake, who later named him to his cabinet as presidential legal counsel.
Enrile was arrested in July 2014 while he was a sitting senator, but he was promptly moved to a hospital and allowed to post bail 13 months later due to his advanced age.
Two additional defendants in the case, both accused of delivering kickbacks to Enrile and his aide, remain at large, with the court shelving their case on Friday pending their arrest or surrender.
In separate trials, two other senators were arrested and charged with plunder over the alleged misuse of legislators’ so-called “pork barrel” funds, but both were later acquitted.
