by jariusbondoc | Aug 19, 2026 | Gotcha
Photo from DPWH/Facebook
President Bongbong Marcos thinks we’re all litterbugs. He asks why we can’t be like Japanese youngsters who pocket candy wrappers till they get home to put in waste bins.
Actually many of us Filipinos are neatniks. We do bring home trash for proper disposal. We segregate and compost.
But what happens after that? The government louses up garbage collection.
Observe those garbage collectors – government hirelings. They unload our trash bins onto open stinking trucks. They tear open the garbage bags and mix together what we carefully segregated: plastics, paper, cardboards. They even accept careless neighbors’ kitchen waste and rotten food which should’ve been shredded and flushed onto home septic tanks.
Worse follows thereafter. Rubbish trucks speed on highways, stench and flying scraps and all. Everything’s dumped onto open sites, bulldozed, and let to pile up dozens of feet high.
Officials never learned from the Payatas-Quezon City dump disaster of July 2000. Consecutive typhoons caused the unstable pile of trash 130 feet high – 13 building floors – to collapse, killing 300 scavengers and shanty residents, and leaving 300 more missing.
It happened again in Baguio city in Aug. 2011. The decommissioned Irisan dump collapsed onto homes along Asin Road below, killing six and destroying scores of dwellings.
And twice more this year. Jan. 8th: Cebu city’s Binaliw landfill caved in, killing 36 workers, injuring 18, and dozens missing. Feb. 20th: Rodriguez, Rizal landfill gave way, from which only one scavenger’s body was retrieved, although eyewitnesses said as many as 50 were trapped underneath tons of garbage.
Not to forget, a month-long fire raged last April in Navotas Sanitary Landfill, spreading noxious fumes in Metro Manila and Bulacan, in breach of the 1999 Clean Air Act.
On Aug. 10th-14th monsoon rains and high tide pushed 750 tons of garbage – 200 truckloads – onto Redemptorist Water Channel in Baclaran, Parañaque.
The artificial white sand beach along Manila’s famed sunset boulevard also caused floods in the capital. The dolomite sand regularly accumulates massive amounts of drifting trash, clogging up drains.
That dolomite beach is the fault of Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources. It ignored findings that dolomite dust harms the eyes, lungs, and skin. It didn’t study the environmental impact of the fake beachfront on Manila Bay. It paid a contractor P654 million to extract and pulverize dolomite rocks from seaside Alcoy, Cebu. Its Mines and Geosciences Bureau issued ore transport permits without requisite Alcoy municipal permit and public consultation.
Yet President Rody Duterte on Aug. 26th, 2021 praised the monstrosity: “Dolomite is beautiful to the eyes.”
That encapsulated the issue of floods, garbage, and environmental ruin. Politicos and bureaucrats allowed it.
Five years later last Aug. 12th BBM contrasted Filipinos with Japanese kids. National and local politicos and bureaucrats mimicked him, blaming floods and garbage on us citizens.
They must reread the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. Salient features of that R.A. 9003:
• Purpose: Manage solid waste, prioritize waste reduction, protect public health and nature;
• Key provisions: Segregation at source, that is, households, institutions, and commercial establishments must separate garbage into biodegradable, recyclable, non-recyclable/residual and special hazardous waste; 3Rs approach or reduce, reuse, recycle; focus on minimizing waste, composting organic materials; barangays or clusters of them must build materials recovery facilities for sorting;
• Local governments tasked with direct collection, sorting, and structural execution of solid waste programs, including formulating a mandatory 10-year local waste management plan;
• National Solid Waste Management Commission to oversee programs, set guidelines, and unify local strategies;
• NSWMC to be chaired by DENR Sec. (presently Juan Miguel Cuna, with vice chairman Crispian Lao and executive director Maria Delia Valdez).
Sixteen prohibited acts, including:
• Littering, throwing waste matters (including pet poo) in public places such as roads, sidewalks, canals, esteros or parks, and establishments, or causing or permitting the same;
• Undertaking activities or operating, collecting or transporting equipment in violation of sanitation operation and other requirements or permits, P300-P1,000 fine or 1-15 days community service;
• Unsanitary collecting and trucking; open burning of solid waste; causing or permitting the collection of non-segregated or unsorted wastes; take note: city/municipal mayors and barangay officials;
• Squatting in open dumps and landfills; open dumping, burying of biodegradable or nonbiodegradable materials in flood prone areas, P1,000-P3,000 or one-half to six months imprisonment;
• Mixing of source-separated recyclable materials with other solid waste in any vehicle, box, container or receptacle used in solid waste collection; improper operation of open dumps; manufacture, distribution, or use of non-environmentally acceptable packaging materials, P500,000;
• Importing toxic wastes misrepresented as “recyclable” or “with recyclable content”, P10,000-P200,000, plus imprisonment of 30 days to three years;
• Constructing any establishment within 200 meters from open dumps, controlled dumps, or sanitary landfill; and constructing or operating landfills or any waste disposal facility on any aquifer, groundwater reservoir, or watershed area and or any portions thereof, P100,000-P1 million, plus one to six years in prison.
In Dec. 2008 the Supreme Court ordered national and local officials to keep Manila Bay clean. The 1977 Environment Code or PD 1152 obligates them to do so.
Covered agencies: DENR, DILG, PNP Maritime Group, Coast Guard, DBM, DepEd, DOH, DA, DPWH, MWSS, LWUA, PPA, MMDA.
Local governments: Bataan, Pampanga, Bulacan, Tarlac, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, and 17 Metro Manila cities.
Officials, politicos, and bureaucrats must also beware. We Filipinos want them to answer for the P1.7-trillion flood control scam, 2016-present, which killed family members and destroyed our homes, farms, orchards, shops, vehicles, furniture, clothes, even memorabilia.
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by jariusbondoc | Aug 14, 2026 | Gotcha
Photo from DPWH/Facebook
Senate Minority Leader Alan Cayetano is being blamed for 32 ghost public works. He is also being blamed for the dormancy of 32 Senate committees.
The two issues are joined.
The 32 fake flood works are in Cayetano’s Taguig home city. All are labeled “slope protection and mitigation”, Majority Senator Panfilo Lacson said. Some are for around P100 million each, totaling P2.385 billion from Cayetano’s P6.79-billion insertion in the 2025 national budget.
“Bulacan is the microcosm of flood project anomalies. Taguig is something else – employing old and new tricks, passing off illegal reclamations as slope protection, ghost projects, double appropriations, recycled photos from past completed contracts to bill and collect for new ones – all controlled by one person, dating as far back as 2019,” Lacson posted on X.
Cayetano took offense, saying that phantom works worsened floods in Bulacan, while there’s none in Taguig.
Lacson alleged plunder, malversation, graft and corruption. “We turned over to the Office of the Ombudsman for their further evaluation and motu proprio investigation all documentary and testimonial evidence, official records from government websites, while others were supplied by reliable sources. From 2020-2025 Taguig accumulated P14.4B worth of infra projects and still counting.”
Among the contracts are P94-million flood control in Barangay Lower Bicutan, P49.9-million multipurpose building at the Lakeshore Complex reclamation, P94-million Laguna Lakeshore improvement, and two rehab works each worth P141.8 million at Phases 4 and 5.
Lacson avoided linking Cayetano’s wife Laarni who is on her fifth term as Taguig mayor, 2025-2028. She was four-time mayor in 2010-2019 and 2022-2025.
Cayetano’s estranged brother Lino tipped off Lacson about other details. Lino was Taguig congressman in 2013-2016 and mayor in 2019-2022. He now chairs government-owned People’s Television Network.
Taguig proceeded with reclamation on its own and sold segments to private buyers without Philippine Reclamation Authority consent. PRA is to seize large portions of the Laguna de Bay reclamation, Lacson told DZBB Sunday.
Last Tuesday, Cayetano did not attend the Senate impeachment hearing in the morning and plenary in the afternoon.
Majority Senator Raffy Tulfo complained about inability to convene three committees that he chairs – Environment, Migrant Workers, Public Services. He said that’s because Cayetano refuses to nominate Minority senators as members.
Angry words were exchanged with Alan’s sister Minority Senator Pia Cayetano. She said Tulfo should have approached her to inquire about the committee memberships instead of resorting to dramatics. She added that Alan wasn’t there because feeling under the weather.
The previous day Alan had said on a Facebook video that he showered in the cold rain Sunday. Though absent from the Senate on Tuesday he broadcast from home on Facebook about “purpose in politics and in faith”.
Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian confirmed that 32 of 41 standing committees have been sleeping because of no members from the Minority.
Among these committees are the powerful Blue Ribbon which investigates graft and corruption, and Foreign Affairs which is the sole purview of the Senate.
Also Education, Health, Science and Technology, Public Works, Defense, Agriculture, and Transportation which are to receive bulk of the 2027 national budget.
Committee hearings scrutinize budget details before submission to the plenary.
As far back as June 3rd Raffy’s brother Majority Senator Erwin Tulfo complained that he too couldn’t convene the Blue Ribbon Committee that he chairs. Cayetano allegedly was delaying to nominate four Minority senators as members. Yet the Minority was heckling Tulfo for supposed refusal to continue investigating the P1.7-trillion flood works scandal.
On July 29th Lacson posted on X: “The public may partake of the ‘delicious’ part if they watch the Blue Ribbon Committee hearings – details of the truth behind the 5 Taguig case studies we submitted to the Ombudsman.”
Yet the previous day Erwin accused the Minority of attempting to prevent the Blue Ribbon from proceeding with the probe.
Asked who from the Minority was seeking to stop the hearing, Erwin avoided naming names but said, “Obvious. Who is being investigated? Who is Senator Lacson targeting?”
Cayetano was Senate President from May 11th to June 3rd – 23 working days. For five days thereafter he boycotted the plenary while broadcasting daily on Facebook to forestall his ouster.
Cayetano reappeared at the Senate with unkempt beard and mustache.
On July 20th Erwin told podcaster Christian Esguerra: “I think he started this actuation nu’ng matanggal siya as Senate President. Nag-iba ang takbo ng isip ni Senator Alan. Kaya nga ipinagdadasal ko na lang na sana bumalik pa sa katinuan.
“Tignan mo pati ang postura niya. Hindi na nag-aahit. Hindi mo na maintindihan. Parang taong-grasa na. ‘Yong porma niya, pati ‘yong mga pananalita niya, parang out of the blue biglang mag-snap na lang ng ganun.”
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by jariusbondoc | Aug 12, 2026 | Gotcha
PNA Photo
“Is there such crime as character assassination – or even ‘attempted’ character assassination?”
That’s Atty. Ruy Rondain’s reply when asked about a purported plot by his law firm to do a hatchet job on Executive Secretary Ralph Recto.
Rondain told this writer yesterday he is one of four lawyers linked by the NBI to the plot. He said he and partner Atty. Orlando Mendiola have been subpoenaed to the NBI-National Capital Region on Friday.
Rondain declined to identify his two junior associates implicated by the NBI: “Kawawa naman sila, mga bata pa, hindi pa sanay sa ganito.”
“In deference to the NBI” he also would not say what statement to give to investigators. “I will just talk to news reporters afterwards.”
In headlines is news about Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste’s supposed scheme to smear the reputation of political archfoe Executive Secretary Ralph Recto.
It started with the arrest on July 28th by NBI agents of a pimp and five trafficked women in an elite Manila hotel. During investigation the pimp alias “Ken” and one of the women alias “Jen” asked if their arrest had to do with their planned smear job.
NBI Director Melvin Matibag then told the press about the plan of “Ken”, “Jen”, and three of the four arrestees to execute affidavits linking Recto to drugs and illicit trysts in a Makati condo from 2022 to 2025.
Matibag said ex-congressman Jacinto “Jing” Paras met with “Ken” and “Jen” thrice – July 11th, 15th, 26th – to polish the tale.
Paras supposedly told “Ken” and “Jen” that Leviste will pay them P5 million – P1 million each for “Ken”, “Jen”, and the three other women. Another P500,000 is supposedly Paras’s commission, Matibag told Sapol-DWIZ Saturday.
Matibag said four lawyers were present in the July 15th and 26th meetings. In a sworn statement on Aug. 6th “Ken” identified the four lawyers through photographs.
“Ken” swore that the two junior associates brought laptops to take the false testimonies.
The smear job was supposed to have come in series, starting Aug. 2nd or 3rd, Matibag quoted “Ken” and “Jen”.
Matibag said one of the charges against Leviste, Paras, and the four lawyers could be subornation of perjury.
Subornation of perjury is the criminal act of persuading, inducing, or forcing another person to lie under oath. It can be through bribery or coercion.
But to carry weight, subornation of perjury must have been consummated via an actual false testimony.
Leviste and Paras have denied NBI’s allegations. Through their respective lawyers, Karen Danielle Fajardo and Mark Tolentino, they have also asked for specific charges before showing up at NBI-NCR yesterday, Tuesday.
The NBI announced, however, that Leviste flew to Hong Kong Aug. 2nd with no given return date.
Rondain said his associate Fajardo and his lawyer-daughter Gabrielle appeared at the NBI on Leviste’s behalf. He said Leviste engaged their services only this week.
Rondain and Mendiola have prominent – controversial – political clients. Foremost is ex-congressman Zaldy Co, reportedly hiding in Europe from criminal charges related to the P1.7-trillion flood control scam. Also from supposed death threats, since he linked President Bongbong Marcos, son Rep. Sandro Marcos, and ex-Speaker Martin Romualdez to the flood works scandal.
Rondain was also counsel in 2021 of then-Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi in the latter’s controversial transfer of $565-million Chevron shares in Malampaya gas field to then-President Rody Duterte’s campaign contributor Dennis Uy.
Rondain was also counsel in 2006 of then-First Gentleman Mike Arroyo whom 36 journalists sued for P12.5-million damages.
Reports are that Leviste and Paras are targeting five other prominent officials for character assassination: Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla, DILG Sec. Jonvic Remulla, DPWH Sec. Vince Dizon, DICT Sec. Henry Aguda, and Secretary to the Cabinet Benhur Abalos.
Paras and the Remulla brothers are members of the UP-Diliman fraternity Upsilon Sigma Phi. They joined in 1971, 1979, and 1987, respectively.
Paras’s lawyer is Atty. Mark Tolentino. A Lex Talionis frat brother of Duterte in San Beda Law, Tolentino was Assistant Secretary of Transportation in 2017. Paras and Tolentino could not be reached for comment.
Tolentino was removed in 2018 when linked to a €1.9-billion or $2.1-billion scandal of German payments processing firm Wirecard. The NBI investigated the case.
Matibag said it was “dismissed without prejudice, meaning it can be reopened whenever new evidence so warrants.”
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by jariusbondoc | Aug 7, 2026 | Gotcha
PNA Photo
Ex-senator Bong Revilla was allowed to post bail last Friday from non-bailable malversation raps.
“May trumabaho,” the ombudsman sneered Saturday.
On Tuesday a star witness testified to delivering P250-million malversed money to Revilla.
Revilla skipped the hearing, having paid P1-million bail.
Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla’s remark insinuated ruses. Revilla’s counsel Ramon Esguerra manifested concern that it cast doubt on the integrity of the Sandiganbayan Third Division.
But Justices Ronald Moreno and Fritz delos Santos didn’t take offense. Moreno said that in his two decades as magistrate, “I have never been accused of being influenced, never been bribed and never inhibited.”
A Facebook reel on the controversial bail went viral. Political vlogger Chris Tan researched Moreno’s past rulings.
President Rody Duterte appointed Moreno to the anti-graft court in June 2018, Tan recounted. Three years later, Moreno was among four justices who cleared Makati ex-mayor Elenita Binay of malversation in overpriced hospital equipment.
In 2025, Moreno also penned the clearing of Makati ex-mayors Jojo and Junjun Binay of malversation, Tan added. It concerned what senators had scrutinized for overpriced parking building construction.
Tuesday’s star witness was DPWH ex-Usec. Roberto Bernardo. He swore to have brought P125-million cash to Revilla’s White House residence in 2024. Plus another P125 million in March 2025.
Driver-aide Vergel Niño Garcia also delivered P250 million in February 2025, Bernardo added.
The first delivery consisted of cash in six boxes and one paper bag. The second, 13 boxes. The third, six boxes.
The money was supposed to be for Revilla’s 2025 reelection campaign. He ran but lost under President Bongbong Marcos’ Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas.
Malversation has four elements:
• offender is a public officer;
• he has custody or control of funds or property by reason of the duties of his office;
• government owns the funds or property involved for which he is accountable and
• he appropriated, took or misappropriated, or consented to, or through abandonment or negligence, permitted the taking by another person of such funds or property.
Malversation, like plunder, is non-bailable. Still, an accused can plead for bail as a matter of right. Justices hold bail hearings separate from the case proper.
Revilla’s bail petition was granted Friday morning. Custodians then brought him back to Quezon City Jail in Payatas, near Sandiganbayan. Lawyers worked on papers for the P1 million. Before dusk, Revilla was set free.
Revilla’s co-accused are DPWH Bulacan ex-district engineer Brice Hernandez, engineers Jaypee de Leon Mendoza, Arjay Salvador Domasig, Emelita Juat, accountant Juanito Mendoza and cashier Christina Mae Pineda.
The six have not been accorded bail.
On Tuesday Bernardo incriminated his ex-boss DPWH secretary Manuel Bonoan.
Bernardo detailed their modus operandi:
• Revilla approached him and asked for 25 percent “commitment fee.”
• Bonoan had access to DPWH allocations and discretion to set aside lump-sums for lawmakers who requested projects from him.
• Bonoan got 75 percent, and shared 25 percent each with Bernardo and fellow-Usec. Catalina Cabral (now deceased).
• Although denying participation in the ghost project in Pandi, Bulacan, Bernardo admitted to profiting from other lawmakers.
• Bernardo swore in his affidavit to have serviced Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Francis Escudero and former senator and Makati Mayor Nancy Binay.
Justices Moreno and Delos Santos concurred with Third Division chairman Justice Karl Miranda in denying bail to Revilla’s six co-accused.
Miranda dissented from Revilla’s bail grant, but was overruled by Moreno and Delos Santos, the decision author.
Justice Miranda asserted: “The prosecution was able to present strong evidence against Revilla to warrant the denial of his bail application… Alleged acts of Revilla may only be appreciated properly when contextualized in the kalakaran or scheme perpetrated in DPWH.
“There is strong evidence that Revilla committed the acts alleged in the Information, in furtherance of a conspiracy and this warrants the denial of his bail.
“It is not required to prove that Revilla personally intervened in congressional deliberations to ensure the funding of the project. It is sufficient to show that he committed overt acts, in the absence of which the project would not have been included in the General Appropriations Act.”
Revilla was among lawmakers implicated in 2013 in Janet Lim Napoles’ pork barrel scam. Despite acquittal in 2018, the Sandiganbayan ordered him to return P124.5 million. He refused because already declared innocent.
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by jariusbondoc | Aug 5, 2026 | Gotcha
Mere slight rains flood up our communities and highways. Employees and students can’t get to work and school. Homes and shops are muddied. Roads disintegrate. Rivers rise, bridges collapse. Traffic jams. Tap water turns murky. Electricity conks out, and with it cellular service too.
Feigning concern, officials suspend school and government work. They publicize themselves leading rescue and relief work. They distribute food, medicines, cash aid. All from taxes, not their pockets. Yet tarpaulins picture them as do-gooders.
Stricken folk become dependent on the local officials. They begin to owe them debts of gratitude, electing them and their kinsmen forever.
In truth, it’s political dynasties that are causing the breakdown of the Philippines. Eighty-two percent of lawmakers are dynasts. They enact annual budgets from which to plunder and self-promote. Favorite pork barrels are roadworks, flood controls, health care and cash ayuda.
Kinsmen control provincial capitols, and city and municipal halls. Seventy-one of 82 governors, or 87 percent are dynasts. So are 113 of 149, or 75 percent of city mayors. Also, 910 of 1,493, or 61 percent of municipal mayors. Vice governors, vice mayors, provincial board members and city and municipal councilors are also dynasts.
The President and Vice President are dynasts.
Non-dynasts aren’t necessarily angels. But there’s bigger temptation for dynasts to steal. Spouses, parents and offspring, siblings and cousins are able to control public funds. Cashiers, accountants and auditors are their appointees and recommendees. Easy to keep secret their thievery.
The Supreme Court outlawed pork barrels in 2013. Still, political dynasts awarded themselves “budget insertions.”
Fake, faulty, overpriced flood works have been exposed as the biggest scam ever. It began as ghost dredging of lakes and rivers in the mid-2000s to 2015. In 2016-2025 budget and public works officials expanded to river and seawall construction, resulting in P1.7-trillion kickbacks for dynasts and bureaucrats.
Sleaziest flood projects were in Bulacan’s first district. Investigators uncovered P5-billion ghost dike constructions in Calumpit, Hagonoy, Malolos and Baliuag towns from which four senators pocketed 40 percent commissions. Oriental Mindoro’s first district came in second. The ombudsman filed malversation and graft raps for P289.5-million substandard road dikes in Naujan town.
In Davao Occidental, a P179.5-million ghost flood work led to indictment of DPWH officials and contractor Sarah Discaya’s St. Timothy Construction Corp. Declared substandard in La Union was a P89.7-million canal dug by Silverwolves Construction of congressmen brothers Eric and Edvic Yap.
In Ilocos Norte, flood control allocations skyrocketed by over 1,700 percent from P463.67 million to P8.72 billion. Projects in Leyte grew five-fold from P2.17 billion to P10.06 billion. In the Cordillera mountains, the multibillion-peso racket was in flimsy roadside rock nettings, cat’s eyes and safety roller barriers.
Lacking critical thinking, Filipinos can’t understand that dynasts cause their misery.
In 2018, Filipino 15-year-olds were the lowest among 79 countries in Reading Comprehension. They couldn’t write a single sentence from a paragraph they read in their chosen language under the Program for International Student Assessment.
In PISA 2022, Filipinos were 77th of 81 countries. Not much difference from 2018. The plunder by political dynasts worsened during that period.
Filipino fourth-graders, aged 9-10, were lowest of 58 countries in the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. In ASEAN, Filipino fifth and eight graders fared worse than counterparts in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam – ahead only of Cambodia.
PISA examinees in 2022 and 2018 are now aged 19 and 23. One can just imagine how they are lagging in free college, or if they’re gainfully employed at all. And what of their offspring, if any?
TIMSS takers in 2019 are now in Grade 11. They were promoted because the public school system is a conveyor belt that leaves no one behind. They must give way to the next batch of classroom seat occupants.
Child malnutrition pervades. One in four kids aged five and below is stunted or bansot. One in seven is underweight, payatot. One in 18 is wasting, putot.
The situation is haven for political dynasts. The duller the voters, the longer the dynasties stay.
Bongbong Marcos made no mention of dynasties in his State of the Nation Address the other Monday. Perhaps he knows that his congressman-son Sandro Marcos’ biggest project since 2025 is a fake anti-dynasty bill.
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by jariusbondoc | Jul 31, 2026 | Gotcha
Reports tie Martin Romualdez to four mansions in Forbes Park, Makati, one across Malacañang, Manila, one in Tacloban, one in Cebu, two in America and one in Spain.
What did Bongbong Marcos really tell first cousin Martin about those many mansions? There are two conflicting versions:
One, BBM castigated Martin for avarice that tarnished the admin in the flood control scandal. That’s according to Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco in a One News interview on Nov. 14, 2025.
“Martin, kayo ni Zaldy [Co], ilang bahay ba ang gusto niyo sa Forbes Park? Gaano karaming eroplano, helicopter? Gaano karaming caviar kaya niyo kainin? Ilang Ferrari gusto niyo?” Tiangco quoted BBM telling Martin just days prior. Tiangco’s wife is also first cousin of BBM and Martin.
Two, BBM ordered Martin to buy the mansion on 30 Tamarind Street, Forbes Park supposedly as dropoff and storage of suitcases of cash plundered from public works. That’s according to ex-congressman Zaldy Co on Nov. 24, 2025.
“Sinabi po sa akin ni Speaker Martin na si PBBM ang nag-utos sa kaniya na bilhin ang bahay sa No. 30 Tamarind Street para gamitin bilang bagsakan at imbakan ng pera mula sa mga SOP, koleksyon at deliveries na para sa Pangulo,” Co said in his fourth video version of the P1.7-trillion flood works scam.
Investigators link Co to the scam as chairman of the House appropriations committee when Martin was speaker, July 2022-Sept. 2025. He released the videos from Europe, where he fled after US medical treatment.
Present and past investigations plus news reports link Martin as well to the 10 mansions:
• 42 McKinley Drive, Forbes Park.
Co said his aides Mark and Paul delivered payoffs on instructions of Martin’s assistant Jocelyn. The suitcases of cash came from DPWH-Bulacan district engineer Henry Alcantara. Those were first dropped off at Co’s house in Valle Verde, Pasig or Shangri-La Hotel penthouse in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.
• 14 Narra Street, Forbes Park.
Co said this became the alternate dropoff after Martin vacated 42 McKinley. A 104-page ombudsman complaint states that Martin’s Brightnews Corp. bought this property on Jan. 26, 2023 for P1.6 billion paid through two P800-million manager’s checks from Philippine Veterans Bank. Lawyers Edgar Dennis Padernal and Jose Raulito Paras, Martin’s Upsilon Sigma Phi fraternity mate in UP Diliman, supposedly front for Martin in Brightnews.
This mansion was previously rented by Rose Nono Lin, wife of Chinese fugitive Lin Weixiong alias Allan Lim. Lin Weixiong was the partner in Offshore Gaming and the P11.5-billion Pharmally scam of Michael Yang, who lived across the street.
• 30 Tamarind Street, Forbes Park.
Co claimed that this “bagsakan at imbakan” of cash in suitcases is only a stone’s throw away from BBM’s residence. Malacañang spokesperson Claire Castro denies this. But Wikipedia lists 27 Tamarind Street, immediately diagonal to Martin’s mansion, among current and former properties of the Marcos clan. Source: Republic of the Philippines v. Bienvenido Tantoco, et al. Civil Case 0008.
• Townhouse inside Manila Polo Club, McKinley Drive, Forbes Park.
Ombudsman investigators quote eight of 18 Co bagmen as detailing payoffs of cash in paper bags from Martin to certain officials.
• Aguado Mansion across the street from Malacañang Palace.
Co’s bagman ex-Marine Sgt. Orly Guteza claimed at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on Sept. 25, 2025 having delivered suitcases of cash to this manor. Martin supposedly entertains partymates and legislators in this historic site.
• Villa Kabila, Sotogrande, Cadiz, Spain.
This multi-bedroom luxury residence with swimming pool is within a three-hectare hacienda. Martin reportedly bought it in January 2024 for 6.9 million euros (P472 million). Sotogrande, with Mediterranean beach and hillside view of Gibraltar, was developed by the same couple behind Forbes Park. The ombudsman complaint cites a report that Martin’s second son plays polo there.
• 262 Real St., Purok 1, Brgy. 65, Tacloban City.
This is Martin’s official residence as congressman of Leyte’s 1st district.
• House and lot in Banilad, Cebu City.
Along with a farm in Mabalacat, Pampanga, this property is listed in Martin’s Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth.
• 2.5-hectare estate in Dover, Massachusetts.
Valued at $2.44 million (P130.5 million) that Martin held since 1988 before transfer to AMMY Incorporated for $1 in July 2025.
• Estate in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Purchased for $6.9 million (P425 million) in September 2022 through a company linked to his close associate and fraternity brother, Andrew Casiño.
In his State of the Nation last Monday, BBM said the ombudsman has filed case upon case against Martin. He claimed to have exposed the flood works plundering in the same report a year earlier. (In truth, senators and investigative journalists, including this column, have been documenting fake river and lake dredging as far back as 2007.)
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