Lawyer Levito Baligod wants the Department of Justice (DOJ) to step aside from a batch of cyberlibel complaints lodged against him and 18 former soldiers, pointing to a parallel inquiry already underway at the Office of the Ombudsman.
Speaking on Saturday, Baligod said the substance of those complaints overlaps with matters the anti-graft body is presently examining. The former soldiers have alleged that former congressman Elizaldy Co directed them to hand off suitcases filled with cash to a range of recipients, government officials among them. Several of the soldiers, he said, have already sat down for interviews with the Ombudsman over precisely those claims.
The complaints before the DOJ and its prosecution offices, filed by a number of lawmakers, rest on the premise that what the soldiers alleged is untrue. For Baligod, having two separate agencies probe the identical set of questions at the same time invites trouble.
“So the Department of Justice should recuse or inhibit itself to allow the Ombudsman to conduct the preliminary investigation,” he said, warning of “the danger of conflicting decisions.”
He traced the Ombudsman’s involvement to February, when the former soldiers turned in a joint sworn affidavit that, according to him, the body subsequently relied on in taking up the complaint.
“Because the Ombudsman used the affidavit of several soldiers and when the Ombudsman used that, it means there is truth from it,” Baligod claimed.
In his view, it is that pending inquiry, and not a separate DOJ proceeding, that should settle whether the former military personnel’s accusations hold up.
