The Sandiganbayan has found a former Quezon City prosecutor guilty of direct bribery for receiving P103,000 from a complainant in 2014 in exchange for a favorable resolution. In a decision dated Sept. 7, the court’s Fifth Division sentenced dismissed Assistant City Prosecutor Edgar Navales to a maximum prison term of two years and four months and ordered him to pay a fine of P200,000. In one of the messages, Navales told De Leon about an “emissary” and asked for more money for a certain “Chief Meynard”—apparently namedropping Chief Prosecutor Maynard Bautista. In 2016, the Office of the Ombudsman ordered Navales’ dismissal from government service for grave misconduct over the same case. Then Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales also ordered the filing of a direct bribery case against Navales in the Sandiganbayan.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer September 27, 2018 21:33 UTC