MANILA -- The Sandiganbayan 5th Division has denied the admission of the memorandum of alleged pork barrel scam queen Janet Lim Napoles, who asked for her acquittal in her plunder case, among others.

In a resolution promulgated on July 4, 2023, the memorandum of Napoles in her plunder case involving former APEC party list representative Edgar Valez was not accepted by the court because it was filed on March 31, 2023, beyond the February 19, 2023 deadline.

A memorandum is the summation of arguments made by the defense and the prosecution, and is filed after their presentation of witnesses and pieces of evidence.

“Lamentably, Napoles failed to justify the belated filing of her memorandum,” the court said in the resolution penned by Associate Justice Maria Theresa Mendoza-Arcega, with the concurrence of Division Chairperson Rafael Lagos and Associate Justice Maryann Corpus-Mañalac.

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Napoles and Valdez are facing plunder, as well as seven related graft cases, involving P57 million kickbacks from the Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF scam.

In the memorandum of Napoles, her lawyer asked the court to take notice of the testimony of Benhur Luy in the related graft cases that the amounts supposedly given to Valdez as kickbacks did not come from PDAF.

Her lawyer also stressed that the alleged kickbacks did not come from checks issued by the Department of Budget and Management.

“More so, she prayed for her acquittal from the crime of plunder for failure of the prosecution to prove her guilt beyond reasonable doubt,” the court noted.

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The court, however, stressed in its ruling that the denial of the memorandum of Napoles will not result into the violation of due process since its filing is not mandatory.

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