Philippines
Nobel peace Prize winner still faces other cases
’Today, facts win, truth wins, justice wins, ‘ says the embattled Nobel laureate Maria Ressa after being acquitted yesterday of four charges of tax evasion that were filed in 2018 by the previous Duterte government.
In an 80-page decision, the Philippines’ Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) ordered the acquittal of Ressa and Rappler Holdings Corporation for “failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.”
With the junking of the four CTA cases, there remain only three active court cases against Rappler and Ressa: the appeal of Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. in their conviction for cyber libel pending at the Supreme Court, the lone tax case at the Pasig City RTC, and the appeal on the closure of Rappler pending at the CA.
Ressa was in Vancouver in September last year to receive an honourary degree by Simon Fraser University – the first and only Filipino to be honoured by a major Canadian university.
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