ShareThisQUEZON CITY – Former Armed Forces comptroller Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia has entered plea bargain that he will return over P135 million in alleged ill-gotten wealth in exchange of his admission of graft.
Following the plea bargain, the Sandiganbayan his release after he posted a P60,000 bail for charges of bribery and money laundering.
Garcia has already pleaded guilty to direct bribery and to violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Act before the Sandiganbayan Second Division.
Garcia had been accused of amassing at least P300 million in government funds.
He pleaded guilty to lesser cases of graft under a plea bargain agreement before the Sandiganbayan.
He entered guilty pleas to direct bribery and violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Act at the anti-graft court’s Second Division.
“Yes,” Garcia told the Court when asked whether he would plead guilty to the lesser offenses filed against him.
Garcia was accused of amassing P303.27 million in ill-gotten wealth while in active service with the military. His wife and children were also accused for allegedly helping him conceal suspected illegal assets and the US gov’t charged them with smuggling dollars into the country.
The prosecutors did not oppose the guilty pleas to lesser offenses which were deemed submitted for resolution before the Court’s second Division.
During his arraignment, Garcia had pleaded not guilty to the charges of plunder and violation of the provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
Plunder is a non-bailable capital offense punishable with reclusion perpetua or life imprisonment of at least 30 years. Direct bribery, on the other hand, is punishable with prision mayor of from six years
and one day up to 12 years of jail term under the Revised Penal Code.
A provision in AMLA penalizes direct transaction of laundered money by seven to 14 years. The act of allowing such a transaction to happen is also penalized by four to seven years imprisonment.
The guilty pleas came amid reports that Garcia has executed deeds of conveyance for the transfer of some of his assets in favor of the government.
This was seen as part of a plea bargaining agreement being forged by the prosecution panel and Garcia and his co-defendants in the case.
Garcia was charged with plunder in April 2005 along with wife Clarita, and sons Ian Carl and Timothy Mark, and later with violation of AMLA with his wife, two sons and a third son, Juan Carlo.
Investigators also found out that Garcia and his wife have transferred $500,000 to the United States in seven tranches from November 1993 to January 2004.
Ian Carl and Timothy Mark, for their part, were held by the US Customs and Border Patrol officials on Dec. 19, 2003 for trying to sneak in $100,000 through the San Francisco International Airport.