DOJ charges De Lima for telling Dayan to skip House probe

Senator Leila de Lima was charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) before a Quezon City court for allegedly instructing her former

bodyguard and lover Ronnie Dayan to ignore the House investigation into the illegal drugs trade inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

Assistant State Prosecutor Vilma Lopez Sarmiento indicted De Lima before the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court for violation of Article 150 (disobedience to summons of National Assembly) of the Revised Penal Code.

(De Lima’s) “advice to Mr. Dayan through his daughter to hide and not to appear in the House inquiry constitutes an act amounting to restraining another to attend as a witness in the national assembly (now Congress of the Philippines) and inducing disobedience to a summon,” the DOJ said it its resolution.

The DOJ filed the case after receiving the complaint from Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas and House Committee on Justice Chairman and Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali last week.

If found guilty, De Lima faces a prison term of up to six months.

The DOJ recommended no bail for De Lima.

“We did not conduct any preliminary investigation because under the Rules on Summary Procedure, if the imposable penalty is less than 6 months, we can file it directly [in court] and, in fact, there are cases in which the imposable penalty is 4 years, 2 months, and one day that the investigating prosecutor need not conduct any preliminary investigation,” OIC Prosecutor General Jorge Catalan Jr. said.

Dayan appeared before the House panel after his arrest in La Union on November 22.

During the inquiry, he denied collecting drug money from high-profile inmates at NBP.

Dayan however admitted receiving around 18 million from drug lord Kerwin Espinosa for the senatorial campaign chest of De Lima.

He said he decided to live a life of a fugitive on De Lima’s advice which her daughter Hannah Mae relayed to him through a text message in October.