“Today, facts win, truth wins, justice wins,” a jubilant Ressa, who was acquitted by the Court of Tax Appeals, told reporters. Had she been convicted of the charges, the Rappler CEO and one of PeopleAsia’s People of the Year 2022 awardees could have spent 34 years behind bars.
Veteran journalist, Nobel laureate and one of PeopleAsia’s People of the Year 2022 awardee Maria Ressa is no tax evader! The Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) has just acquitted Ressa and Rappler, the online news site she founded and leads, of tax evasion.
According to a Rappler report, the CTA 1st Division, composed of Associate Justices Catherine Triunfante Manahan, Jean Marie Bacorro-Villena and Marian Ivy Reyes-Fajardo, handed down its decision Wednesday, January 18.
“Today, facts win, truth wins, justice wins,” a jubilant Ressa, CEO of Rappler, was quoted by BBC’s Kelly Ng as saying. Had she been convicted, she could have spent 34 years in jail.
Ressa’s legal victory, in the same BBC report, marked the end of her legal woes related to tax evasion, which began in 2018 under the former administration.
The Department of Justice, according to the same BBC report, claimed that Rappler’s issuance of Philippine Depository Receipts to foreign investors Omidyar Network and North Base Media had generated taxable income worth more than P 141million, which it did not declare.
The government, under then President Rodrigo Duterte, filed a case against Ressa and Rappler of evading tax payments when the company raised capital after partnering with foreign investors.
Ressa and Rappler denied the charges, saying that the transactions involved legitimate financial mechanisms that don’t generate taxable income.
The CTA said the prosecutors had failed to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and concluded that Ressa and Rappler did not gain from the transactions, Rappler reported.
Another Rappler report said that it is only Manahan who was part of the original set of justices who first tried the case at the CTA. Associate Justice Roman del Rosario inhibited himself when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, while Associate Justice Esperanza Victorino retired in the middle of the trial. Villena replaced Victorino.
Speaking to journalists following the verdict, Ressa, according to the BBC, hailed the development as a victory for “every Filipino who has been unjustly accused.”
“These charges were politically motivated, they were incredible to us, a brazen abuse of power and meant to stop journalists from doing their jobs. These cases are where capital markets, rule of law and press freedom meet,” she added.
Ressa, also the former Jakarta bureau chief of CNN, likewise spoke to the US-based news network soon after the verdict.
“It feels like the world is slowly turning right side up. I was hoping for an acquittal and I was thrilled to get it … having said that, I think our victory is not just Rappler’s. It is for every single person who’s been unjustly accused with politically motivated charges,” she said.
Ressa, who’s currently on bail as she appeals a cyber libel conviction handed down in 2020, won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, for her efforts to uphold press freedom in the Philippines.
But Ressa’s legal woes are far from over, the same CNN report added. Rappler is still contesting a 2018 government order for it to shut down after the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission upheld its earlier ruling to revoke the news site’s operating license.
