By Dolly Yasa
BACOLOD City – The Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Negros Occidental dismissed for insufficiency of evidence the criminal complaint for theft and malversation filed by Isabela town Mayor Irene Montilla against Engr. Carlos Malabor and his wife Vine Malabor.
Malabor is the younger brother of former Isabela Mayor Joselito Malabor, then the vice mayor who succeeded the late Enrique Montilla III, husband of the current mayor, after the latter succumbed to a lingering illness halfway through his term.
Joselito lost to Irene, wife of Enrique in the 2019 polls.
Documents furnished to the Daily Guardian here Wednesday revealed that the complaint stemmed from the acquisition of 1,000 sacks of rice which Montilla questioned.
In her complaint-affidavit, Montilla said that she took her oath as duly-elected Mayor of the municipality on June 30, 2019.
Montilla said she found out that on June 27, 2019, there was delivery by New JPL Supply, which is owned and managed by Grainsworld Products, 1,000 sacks of rice valued at P2,256,000.
Respondent Carlos Malabor, then employed as Executive Assistant of the same municipality, received the delivery.
Montilla claimed that she informed Carlos to explain in writing and to render an account as to his procedure on the disposal of the rice stocks.
Montilla also claimed that her oral demands to Carlos were ignored including her final demand through a letter dated August 5, 2019.
She claimed that Job Felix Guanzon, the municipal inspector, categorically denied having seen or inspected the deliveries.
Montilla also accused Vine Malabor, who also worked in the municipal government, and Perla Serrudo, another respondent in the case and also a government worker, of instructing Guanzon to sign the delivery receipts.
But in his findings, Associate Prosecution Attorney II Ken D. Furuyama said Montilla only alleged that respondents Carlos and Vine Malaborand Serrudo are public officers.
But the mayor failed to show evidence indicating that respondents were “accountable public officers who had custody or control of public funds or properties by reason of the duties of their office.”
Furuyama added: “but even assuming the respondents are such, the records are bereft of any direct evidence showing appropriation or misappropriation by the respondents of the 1,000 sacks of rice for their own or personal use.”
“The prima facie presumption of misappropriation despite the purported demand to account for the same cannot be appreciated in this case due to the non-establishment for the presumption to arise,” Furuyama said.
The prosecutor He also said that to prove that the 1,000 sacks of rice were duly accounted for and received by their intended beneficiaries, respondents submitted a total of 28 receipts each signed by the corresponding Barangay Officers who have received the same.
“This, in our honest opinion, sufficiently rebuts the charge that respondents misappropriated the 1,000 sacks of rice for their own personal use,” Fukuyama said.
He further said that the crime of theft was not sufficiently established.
