MANILA – The Supreme Court (SC) has cleared a revenue officer found administratively liable for lapses in her statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN).
In a resolution dated July 12, 2021 and recently published online, the Court's First Division ruled that Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) official Emelita Maraasin Braña "should not be held administratively liable as the intent to commit a wrong is wanting on her part".
The internal affairs unit of the Department of Finance (DOF), known as the Revenue Integrity Protection Service (RIPS), in 2015 alleged that Braña acquired illegal wealth amounting to PHP8.7 million from 2001 to 2013, disproportionate to her and her husband's lawful income.
The amount was determined after DOF-RIPS found what it said were irregularities in respondent's SALN in which she failed to disclose several real and personal properties.
According to the Ombudsman who took over the case, the respondent failed to disclose a 142-square meter piece of land she acquired in September 2008 for PHP299,000, the construction cost of a one-storey structure where a meat shop business was located, a 2007 model vehicle, and a pistol.
The respondent argued the issuance of the title in her name was inadvertently issued since a deed of assignment was already executed in favor of another person in 2003.
She also claimed that the construction cost of the one-storey building was declared in her SALN as "hauling and other equipment used in business".
She added that she declared the vehicle as her service car and that the pistol is owned by her husband, a former member of the military.
The Ombudsman dismissed the charges of unexplained wealth for insufficiency of evidence in 2016 but found her administratively liable for serious dishonesty and ordered her dismissal from the service on Jan. 27, 2016.
Braña went to the Court of Appeals on April 2016, citing “grounds of errors of facts or law that are prejudicial to her interest”.
The following month, the CA granted her petition for a temporary restraining order and writ of preliminary injunction as the “respondent’s explanations on her assets were consistent with her defense of good faith”.
In affirming the CA ruling, the SC said the charges against Braña were based on surmises and conjectures, not supported by substantial evidence.
The Court said "a mere misdeclaration in the SALN does not automatically amount to dishonesty" and that "only when the accumulated wealth becomes manifestly disproportionate to the income or other sources of income of the public officer/employee and he fails to properly account or explain his other sources of income, does he become susceptible to dishonesty". (PNA)
