MANILA (SE): Maria Ressa, Nobel laureate and head of the Rappler online news site, was acquitted of tax evasion charges by the Philippine Court of Tax Appeals on January 18. It is among a slew of which she has long maintained are politically motivated, calling the verdict a victory for “truth.”
Ressa, who shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Russian journalist, Dmitry Muratov, still faces three other cases, including a cyber libel conviction for which she is currently out on bail as she appeals a six-year prison sentence handed down in 2020.
“Today, facts win. Truth wins,” Ressa told reporters after the court tossed out four government charges—brought by the administration of former president, Rodrigo Duterte—that she and Rappler had dodged taxes in a 2015 bond sale to foreign investors.
According to AFP, the tax court said prosecutors failed to prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that Ressa and Rappler Holdings Corp. had evaded paying income taxes owed.
“These charges were politically motivated,” Ressa said, adding, “We were able to prove that Rappler is not a tax evader.”
Today, facts win. Truth wins
Maria Ressa
CNN reported her saying, “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.”
The 59-year-old has been battling a series of cases that media advocates say were filed due to her vocal criticism of Duterte and his drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives.
Asked what the tax court ruling meant, Ressa said: “Hope. That’s what it provides.”
In a statement, Rappler said: “An adverse decision would have had far-reaching repercussions on both the press and the capital markets … With you we will continue to #HoldTheLine”— a slogan used to symbolise their fight for press freedom, AFP reported.
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Rappler is still battling a Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission order to close it for allegedly violating a constitutional ban on foreign ownership in media. Under the constitution, investment in media is reserved for Filipinos or Filipino-controlled entities.
The case springs from a 2015 investment by the US-based Omidyar Network, established by eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar.
Broadcaster, ABS-CBN, which was also critical of Duterte, lost its free-to-air license
Omidyar later transferred its Rappler investment to the site’s local managers to stave off efforts by Duterte to shut it down.
Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said in September that he would not interfere in Ressa’s cases, citing the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government.
Trouble for Ressa and Rappler began in 2016, when Duterte came to power and launched a drug war in which more than 6,200 people were killed in police anti-narcotics operations, official data shows.
Rappler was among the domestic and foreign media outlets that published shocking images of the killings and questioned the crackdown’s legal basis.
Broadcaster, ABS-CBN, which was also critical of Duterte, lost its free-to-air license, while Ressa and Rappler endured what press freedom advocates say was a grinding series of criminal charges, probes and online attacks.
In June 2020, Bishop Broderick Pabillo, the then apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Manila [now Vicar Apostolic of Taytay in Palawan], called cyber libel conviction persecution of press freedom.
“This persecution is done using the law, with its twisted and upright applications, to give it a semblance of legality,” CBCPNews reported Bishop Pabillo as saying at the time.
“This is outright persecution to bring down the institution because of its critical stance against the policies of this government,” he said.
The Philippines ranked 147 out of 180 countries in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index, while the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks the Philippines seventh in the world in its 2022 impunity index, which tracks deaths of media members whose killers go free, CNN reported.
