THE Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office has dismissed outright the complaints for libel, docketed as XV-03-INV-15G-08773 and XV-03-INV-15G-08774 filed by the Eye Center Conglomerate, Inc., represented by Dr. Raymond Evangelista, against Alexander A. Padilla, former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) and Dr. Kim Gariando, Medical Specialist III of PhilHealth’s Operations Audit Department.
In a Joint Resolution dated November 10, 2016, the QC Prosecutor’s Office resolved to dismiss the complaints for libel against Padilla and Gariando, saying that these were “insufficient to indict the respondents with the crime charged.”
The Resolution cited Padilla’s counter-affidavit which emphasized that the statements that were the subject of the complaint “are not per se defamatory as these were culled from official Interim Audit Report of PhilHealth’s Internal Audit Group”. The Resolution also stated that “there is nothing in the complaint-affidavit that shows that he (Padilla) personally knows Dr. Raymond Evangelista or any of the directors of the QCEC” or that “he was prompted by personal ill-will, hatred or spite against these persons”. Further, the resolution said that Padilla delivered his statements during the May 22, 2015 press conference “out of his sworn duty as President and CEO of PhilHealth to protect, inform and warn the public of the schemes employed by these heartless eye centers.”
At the same time, the Resolution articulated that “the element of malice is absent" in the libel complaint against Gariando, stating that “he did not mention or identify the complainant or the Quezon City Eye Center” in a media interview after the press conference. It also added that the audit on QCEC, among other facilities and eye centers, “is part of his official function and duty and was carried out not to destroy the name and business of anyone.”
The case stemmed from the PhilHealth press conference in May 2015 where the issuance of the STOP-Claims (Suspension of Transaction on Payments of Claims) Order on claims filed by two (2) eye centers was announced.
Meanwhile, the perjury case filed by Gariando against Evangelista, docketed as XV-03-INV-15I-10586, was similarly dismissed. The Resolution stated that “there was no willful and deliberate assertion of a falsehood” in Evangelista’s statements, and that it appears that Evangelista “could have honestly believed that Gariando, as shown in the new report, had directly imputed QC Eye Center to have been engaged in the prohibited and illegal practice of using seekers to solicit patients to undergo cataract or other eye procedures.” (END)