Death clears ex-Maguindanao treasurer from criminal raps

The Sandiganbayan has cleared an ex-Maguindanao treasurer involved in various criminal charges owing to his death.

The anti-graft First Division dismissed raps against erstwhile provincial treasurer Osmeña Bandila pursuant to Article 89 of the Revised Penal Code, mandating the criminal liability be totally extinguished in the event of the accused’s demise.

The death certificate issued by the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that Bandila passed away on 3 May 2021, with “undetermined natural death.”

Bandila was a co-accused of ex-Maguindanao governor Sajid Ampatuan in a P16 million graft and malversation charge over the “ghost” procurement of emergency food supplies in 2009.

Records showed Ampatuan, in connivance with Bandila and several officers of Maguindanao, released the sum to Henry Merchandising for the purchase of food supplies such as instant noodles, sardines, brown sugar, dried fish in “strikingly large quantities.”

In a ruling handed down in May 2023, the Sandiganbayan found that the accused disbursed the P16,317,559 despite that they “fully knew that no such purchase was made as the purported supplier Henry Merchandising is fictitious and/or non-existed…”

Bandilla was likewise indicted in another graft and malversation charge in connection with an alleged anomalous P5 million fertilizer fund scam in 2004, with also Ampatuan as the principal accused in May 2019.

In 2018, Both Ampatuan and Bandila were also slapped with another set of corruption charges involving P500 million worth of farm-to-market roads in 2009 that were alleged to have been misused.