MANILA, Philippines — The Sandiganbayan found comedian Roderick Paulate guilty of one count of graft and nine counts of falsifying public documents related to the hiring of “ghost employees” in 2010 when he was a Quezon City councillor for the first time.
You may remember that Paulate was removed from his position as Quezon City District 2 councillor in 2010 after he was accused of hiring ghost workers from July to November of that year.
In 2018, the Office of the Ombudsman filed a case against Paulate, saying that the actor-turned-politician made up a Job Order/Contract of Service with the signatures of fake contractors to get the city government to pay for their salaries.
Paulate was sentenced to between 10 and a half and 62 years in prison. Broken down, the graft charge was between six and eight years, and each of the nine counts of falsification (eight for public documents and one by a public officer) was between six months and six years.
Paulate was sentenced to prison and must pay a fine of P10,000 for each count of falsifying documents. This comes to a total of P90,000, and he will never be able to run for public office again. Vicente Bajamunde, Paulate’s driver and liaison officer, was also found guilty, but he wasn’t charged with lying.
Both Paulate and Bajamunde were told to pay the government P1.109 million (plus 6% interest per year until the debt is paid off in full), which is the amount of public money they took from the City Treasurer’s Office to pay the salaries of people they didn’t hire.
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