On the Napoles children and plunder

The children of the alleged architect of the country’s biggest corruption scandal asked the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan to dismiss the graft case filed against them. Jo Christine and James Cristopher, the oldest of 4 children of Napoles, denied any involvement in the illegal diversion of public funds. But why were the Napoles children included in the charges? The graft charges against the two are based on affidavits of former Napoles employees-turned-whistleblowers, who divulged details showing the children pocketed P900 million ($2.05 million) worth of government money from the highly discretionary Malampaya fund that was meant for victims of Typhoon Ondoy and Pepeng. Napoles on Monday also claimed before the courts that  she cannot be charged with plunder because as a private individual, cannot be charged with plunder because there is no proof of a conspiracy to defraud the government, adding the Ombudsman “conveniently used the word conspiracy, even when there is no proof” in approving her indictment for plunder.

Read the full story here.

Read Napoles’ defense here.