Revilla camp opposes hard disk drive as evidence
The lawyers of Senator Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr. yesterday opposed the inclusion of the external hard disk drive of whistleblower Benhur Luy as part of the formal offer of evidence of state prosecutors.
After having concluded their presentation of witnesses against the bail petition of Revilla and his plunder co-accused, state prosecutors yesterday presented before the Sandiganbayan First Division their formal offer of exhibits including the external hard disk drive of Luy.
The contents of the disk drive was allegedly copied from the computers of the JLN Corporation of alleged pork barrel scam brains Janet Lim Napoles and contained disbursement reports including commissions received by Revilla through his staff member, Atty. Richard Cambe.
Both Napoles and Cambe are co-accused of Revilla in the plunder case and also have petitions to be granted bail.
Atty. Joel Bodegon, the lawyer of Revilla, yesterday made his objections before the court against the offering of the hard drive as evidence since it should be considered as "hearsay evidence."
Bodegon explained before the court that the contents of the hard drive were allegedly copied from the iMac computers of JLN Coporation but none of the computers have been examined by authorities.
Hence, Bodegon "question the authencity, reliability and integrity of the hard disk drive."
Bodegon pointed out that "there is a problem of authenticity and whether or not the copies of the documents in the hard disk drive is a faithful reproduction or copies of the what's in the iMac computer."
Likewise, Atty. Michael Ancheta, the lawyer of Cambe, also said before the court that offering the hard drive is in "violation of the best evidence rule."
Since the hard drive only contains records of money that were disbursed, Napoles’ lawyer Atty. Dennis Buenaventura stressed that the best evidence would have been the signed vouchers and receipts that would show that Cambe and Revilla did receive money from Napoles.
If the contents of the hard drive were copied from the computers, Bodegon indicated that Luy's hard drive should be "inadmissible as evidence" because it should be considered as "hacking" in violation of the E-Commerce Act since it was done without the knowledge of the owner who happens to be Napoles.
Bodegon also asked the court to strike out the testimony of National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) special investigator III Joey Narciso, a digital forensic examiner who examined the hard drive, for being hearsay since his expertise is "not duly established" and that he is only an "ordinary witness" and "not an expert witness".
So far, First Division Chairman Efren dela Cruz yesterday denied to accept, among the evidence offered, the disbursement reports during 2011 and 2012 that were printed from Luy's hard drive.
State prosecutor Joefferson Toribio admitted to reporters that the 2011 and 2012 reports were "immaterial, irrelevant actually."
Under the plunder charge sheet, Revilla and his co-accused were charged for having amassed R224,512,500 ill-gotten wealth from 2006 to 2010 by diverting the Senator's Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) to the nongovernment organizations (NGOs) of Janet Lim Napoles that were engaged in ghost projects.
"And it's okay for us. That pertains only to 2011 and 2012 disbursements so it does not have any bearing to our case. It does not affect our case," Toribio said.