“(W)hatever money they spend on this can always be recovered — in one way or the other — from our electricity bills.”
by Ducky Paredes
Some lawyers convince a client that for a certain amount of money, one can have a positive result in a pending case. In fact, some law firms actually concentrate on cases like these.
After all, the lawyer, whether or not he can actually get some Justice to accept a bribe and do his bidding, still has an even probability of getting the desired result. The court can only go two ways – for or against the client, guilty or innocent. Whichever way it goes, one has a fifty-fifty chance of hitting the jackpot!
In the event that the result that was paid for pans out, the excuse will be something like “the other side gave more” or “politics forced the Court to rule otherwise” and the money is returned to the client. Some law firms and lawyers actually only run this as a scam. There are some law firms, however, that will actually deliver on their promised result, by hook or by crook. These are the ones that give lawyering and our justice system a bad name.
In the current brouhaha between confessed deal-maker Francis Roa de Borja and Court of Appeals Justice Jose Sabio, Jr., their versions of a conversation they had at the Ateneo Law School in Makati (while Sabio was waiting for his wife to fetch him for home) are diametrically opposed to each other; but, they both agree that there was talk of bribery.
To his students and a fellow Ateneo professor, it “would be out of character” for Justice Sabio to accept a bribe, much less ask for one. He is known to be straight-as-an-arrow as can be expected of the professor handling legal ethics for the Ateneo.
Businessman Francis De Borja, on the other hand, says that he is a childhood friend of Manila Electric Company (Meralco) Chairman Manolo Lopez and is an acquaintance of a principal in a law firm that was a bleep on the radar during the Ramos presidency and finally looms monstruously large during the current administration.
In the current situation, Justice Sabio is the victim. Evelyn Clavano, a resident of Cagayan de Oro City, has issued a sworn statement saying that Francis called her:
“Francis de Borja requested me if I have the cell phone number of Justice Jose L. Sabio Jr. He related that because he is very close to the Lopezes of Meralco, he wanted to call him (Sabio) regarding his possible inhibition in a certain Meralco case, wherein he was designated as a substitute member of the division vice a justice who was temporarily on-leave by reason of sickness.
“He further said that the Lopezes desire that the same Justice, with whom the Lopezes are more comfortable, to sit in the division. So, I gave Francis de Borja the cell phone number of Justice Jose L. Sabio Jr. through business card.”
Sabio was the lawyer of the family of the late Governor and Congressman Oloy Roa, the father of Evelyn Clavano, when Sabio was still in his private practice in Cagayan de Oro, Borja was a real estate broker who sold some of the Roa properties.
According to Sabio, he and Francis had a conversation during which the amount of P10 million was offered, if he would turn over the Meralco-GSIS case to another justice, more to Meralco’s liking. Says Sabio: “I was shocked he had a very low regard for me. He was treating me like there was a price on my person. I was stunned pero hindi ko magawang bastusin siya.”
Sabio then cut de Borja off by saying he had to leave and walked away.
De Borja continued to try to reach Sabio in the succeeding days, even resorting to using other mutual friends to try to get Sabio to reconsider.
In one call, de Borja said: “Sayang kung hindi ito tatanggapin, sayang ang P10 million.”
“I could not believe he would repeat an offer. I repeated my ‘no.’ He could not understand,” says Sabio.
The people who sent de Borja to Sabio ignored the fact that Sabio has been a justice for almost a decade now, a member of the Philippine Judicial Academy’s Ethics and Judicial Conduct Department, and a pre-bar reviewer on legal and judicial ethics at the Ateneo de Manila University. Did they also know that Sabio is a member of the Opus Dei who even sent his daughter in an immersion and humility lesson to work as a housemaid for six months? If they knew Sabio better, they would never have tried to bribe him.
What was behind that outrageous de Borja claim (after Sabio came out with the story of the P10-million offer) that Sabio said that he was offered a Supreme Court posting and lots of money in the event that he did what the Meralco adversary wanted, is what a lawyer-friend sees as a warning shot from Francis’ principals to all justices. The warning: Do not reject our offer if you do not want to face the same problem that Justice Sabio is now facing.
He could well be right.
De Borja’s story of the P50 billion counter-offer of Justice Sabio is an impossibility. There is no way that Sabio, to whom reputation is everything, would say anything like that to anyone else. Certainly, too, the perceived Meralco enemy in the case, would not go that far. So, why would Sabio be so foolish to go so high. Clearly, the idea was to shock the public with this story on judicial chicanery, which is actually initiated by people like Francis de Borja who go around talking to justices about their cases, contrary to all ethical practices.
The one mistake of Justice Sabio was that he believed everything that de Borja told him (even to the detail that Manolo Lopez was waiting in his car for Francis) and that he did not – as he should have – tell his former business associate that he does not discuss cases before him outside of the court room. Justice Sabio, for all of his high principles, is still too accommodating for his own good.
As for Meralco, it might actually have taken to trying to get the devil himself to fix their case for them, no matter what the cost may be. After all, whatever money they spend on this can always be recovered — in one way or the other — from our electricity bills.
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hvp 08.03.08)
One Comment
Ducky,
Congratulations on your very incisive and well research columns! I have met you casually in the golf tournaments of Seniors and also when Erap was president. You are one of the few people I know that never took advantage of their closeness to top politicians!
Keep up the good work and continue to mold sound public opinions!
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