PHPresident Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently named the new chief of the Sandiganbayan, the anti-graft court that handles his family’s ill-gotten wealth cases. Marcos signed the appointment of Geraldine Faith Econg as the new Sandiganbayan presiding justice in an order dated January 7.
Notable cases, controversies
- Econg was part of the Sandiganbayan divisions that handled high-profile pork barrel cases.
- She was among the associate justices who voted to acquit Senator Bong Revilla of plunder in relation to the scam in 2018. “It is an unpopular decision. I would have loved to be a heroine, that I convicted him, but at the end of the day we are bound by evidence,” Econg said after the promulgation of the ruling that freed Revilla.
- Econg was also among the justices who junked the pork barrel-related plunder case of former senator and now chief presidential legal counsel Juan Ponce Enrile last year. Since the original division consisting of three justices did not arrive at a unanimous decision, Econg and another justice were pulled in as special members of the third division, and then later ruled on the case, together with the existing justices.
- The new Sandiganbayan chief is also the ponente (author) of the ruling that dismissed the last six coconut levy cases against late tyrant Ferdinand E. Marcos, former first lady Imelda Marcos, Enrile, businessmen Cesar Zalamea and Jesus Pineda, and the heirs of former Zamboanga mayor Maria Clara Lobregat. The coco levy scam started following the late tyrant and his cronies’ enactment of a law that imposed taxes on coconut farmers’ products.