MANILA — The Nobel laureate Maria Ressa was acquitted of tax evasion on Wednesday, a rare legal victory after numerous setbacks in her fight to keep publishing her news site Rappler, whose run-ins with the Philippine authorities have become emblematic of the country’s declining press freedoms.
A Philippine court acquitted Ms. Ressa on four charges of tax evasion. She would have faced a maximum sentence of 34 years if convicted.
“Of course, it should be acquittal,” she said in an interview on Tuesday night. “But if not, we’ll continue to fight.”
The case was the first high-profile test of whether the legal troubles facing Ms. Ressa and Rappler would continue under the Philippines’ new president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has benefited from disinformation and tried to downplay his father’s brutal dictatorship. Advocates had urged Mr. Marcos to demonstrate his stated commitment to a free press by intervening in Ms. Ressa’s favor.
There are several other cases pending against Ms. Ressa and Rappler. She is appealing her June 2020 conviction on a cyber libel charge, under which she could face six years in prison. The Philippines’ top court is expected to rule on that case soon.
The authorities began taking action against Ms. Ressa and Rappler during the administration of Mr. Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, as Rappler was aggressively covering Mr. Duterte’s bloody campaign against drugs. That coverage helped Ms. Ressa win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.
Mr. Marcos, who took office in June with Mr. Duterte’s daughter Sara as vice president, recently rejected a request from the International Criminal Court to resume its inquiry into Mr. Duterte’s drug war, which left thousands of people dead.
Mr. Marcos is in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, where a conviction of Ms. Ressa in the Philippines would likely have exposed him to unwanted scrutiny.
In a recent letter to Mr. Marcos, a group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates implored him to “assist in bringing about a rapid resolution to the unjust charges against Maria Ressa and Rappler.”
“We hope to see the Philippines leave the mistakes of its past behind,” they wrote.
The tax evasion case was related to an investment into Rappler by Omidyar Network, which is owned by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The authorities said that the financing violated the restrictions on foreign ownership of domestic media. Rappler countered that Mr. Omidyar’s investment was not the same as owning shares, did not violate the law and did not give Omidyar Network control of its operations.
Rappler continued to publish while it fought its legal battles, and in 2018 the Omidyar Network donated its investment to Rappler employees, which the publication argued should have ended the government’s grievance. However, the authorities then accused Rappler of owing taxes on that transaction.
An appeals court has said that the cyber libel case against Ms. Ressa should not be considered a press freedom issue, stressing that the law under which she was charged was “not geared towards the curtailment of speech.”
Jason Gutierrez reported from Manila and Mike Ives from Seoul. Vivek Shankar contributed reporting from Seoul.
