Cases filed by ombudsman drop by 71% in 2018

The Office of the Ombudsman has filed significantly fewer cases at the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan, down by about 71 percent since former Supreme Court associate justice Samuel Martires assumed office in August 2018.

Based on statistics from the Sandiganbayan Judicial Records Division, the ombudsman’s prosecutorial arm Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) had filed only 739 cases from January to December 2018, a decrease of 71 percent from 2,513 filed cases in the same period in 2017.

Martires officially took oath as the new ombudsman on Aug. 6, replacing Conchita Carpio-Morales who retired on July 25 after completing a seven-year term.

Based on the Sandiganbayan’s report, the ombudsman has filed only 178 cases from August to December 2018, a drop of 81 percent from 978 cases filed during the same period in 2017 under Morales’ term.

The Office of the Ombudsman is the agency tasked to build up cases and prosecute former and incumbent public officials while the Sandiganbayan is a special court that has the mandate to hear such cases.

Meanwhile, the Sandigan- bayan’s records show that it was able to resolve 1,075 cases in 2018, a decrease of 15 percent from 1,264 resolved in 2017.

The anti-graft court was able to slightly trim down its total number of pending cases to 5,237 as of end of Dec. 31, 2018 from 5,493 pending at the end of 2017.

A breakdown showed that for August last year, Martires’ office only filed three cases.

It was, however, noted that these cases were not new but rather just “appealed cases” involving lower-rank govern- ment employees whose cases were originally decided by regional trial courts.