Zaldy drops bombshell; ‘Pure hearsay,’ says Palace
Former Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, who is at the center of a corruption scandal involving multimillion-peso flood control kickbacks, broke his monthslong silence, alleging that President Marcos and ex-Speaker Martin Romualdez ordered P100 billion worth of graft-tainted “insertions” for public works in the 2025 budget.
In a five-minute video he sent to reporters and uploaded on Facebook on Friday, the former chair of the House appropriations committee accused the Marcos administration of “using the entire country’s resources to silence me.”
Co said he decided to speak out and hoped that “I would not be killed before I’m able to release everything.”
His lawyer, Ruy Rondain, confirmed the authenticity of the video but refused to discuss it further.
Co said Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman late last year allegedly relayed “instructions to insert P100 billion worth of projects” during the congressional bicameral conference for the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
“She even told me, ‘You can confirm this with Usec. Adrian Bersamin because he was also in that meeting with President BBM that day,’” Co said.
He said he immediately called Bersamin, head of the presidential legislative liaison office, to confirm the President’s instructions.
“What he said was true,” Co said. “Right after our conversation, I called former Speaker Martin Romualdez and reported the President’s instructions to insert the P100 billion worth of projects, and he told me, ‘What the President wants, he gets.’”
‘Wild accusations’
Both Malacañang and Pangandaman denied Co’s allegations.
“These wild accusations are completely without basis in fact. All the charges leveled against the President are pure hearsay,” said Presidential Communications Secretary Dave Gomez.
“Let us not forget, President Marcos Jr. himself exposed all these flood control anomalies and has taken numerous steps since to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice, the stolen wealth recovered and the system is fixed to avoid any of this from happening again,” Gomez said.
He challenged Co to return to the country and sign everything he said under oath.
Malacañang press officer Claire Castro said Co was linked to the flood control kickback scandal by the evidence, testimony of witnesses and the wealth he had accumulated.
“To save himself from allegations of stealing from the nation’s coffers and to show that he is the victim, he has woven fallacious stories against other people, pointing to other people except himself in spite of the fact that his and his family’s wealth is screaming evidence against him,” Castro said.
‘Already in the NEP’
At a press conference, Pangandaman denied Co’s allegations.
“We reject any insinuations about it,” she said. “The Bicam is purely under the power of the legislature. We respect and strictly follow the budget process and all our actions are aboveboard.”
She said that all appropriations that had been ordered by Mr. Marcos were already in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), which had been presented to Congress months earlier.
Co resigned from his post as appropriations committee chair in January. He left the country for medical treatment in the United States on July 19, missing the President’s July 28 State of the Nation Address where Mr. Marcos blasted corruption and corrupt officials, saying that they were shameless.
In the following month, the President disclosed the capture of a large chunk of the flood control projects by just 15 out of 2,000 private contractors, including several allegedly owned by Co and his family.
Mr. Marcos then went on a high-profile campaign to expose unfinished, substandard and “ghost” projects, with amounts totaling in the billions of pesos, triggering investigations by the House and the Senate.
In September, the President created the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) to investigate irregularities in the flood control projects from 2016 to 2025.
‘Poster boy’ for lies
Co said he was ready to return to the country after his medical treatment but he was allegedly told by Romualdez, supposedly at the behest of Mr. Marcos, to remain abroad and he would be taken care of.
“I believed them. That’s why I didn’t return. I shut my mouth, I followed instructions,” Co said in his five-minute video labeled Part 1. “What I didn’t know about their promise to take care of me was that they were actually going to use me in their campaign, and made me their poster boy for their own lies.”
Co said that after his conversation with Pangandaman, he met with the budget secretary, Bersamin and Romualdez at the Aguado Building in front of Malacañang’s Gate 4. There, Bersamin gave him the list of the projects to be inserted.
This list, he said, “came directly from PBBM and he took it from a brown leather bag” that he recognized to be Mr. Marcos’ from the 2022 elections.
“That’s why I believed that this was really the instruction of the president,” h said.
After a few days, he said he informed the three as well as Justice Undersecretary Jojo Cadiz whether they could simply insert P50 billion instead because “the DPWH funds would end up larger than the Department of Education.” The Constitution requires that education gets the largest share of the national budget.
‘Utos ng hari’
Co said that he suggested that the P50-billion balance be included in the unprogrammed funds in the 2025 budget “since it is the Office of the President that releases those funds anyway.”
But Pangandaman told him a few days later that “the President’s instruction was to make sure these projects are ‘all inserted because Speaker Martin promised me this and this cannot be changed.’”
“Kumbaga, ang utos ng hari hindi pwedeng mabali (The king’s command is unassailable),” Co said.
That’s why, the lawmaker said, he couldn’t understand why Mr. Marcos “kept saying he couldn’t recognize the budget when everything that we took off and added from each government agency had his approval through Sec. Minah.”
Co resigned his congressional seat on Sept. 29 so that the House could not compel him to return to the country as his name was directly linked to the flood control scandal.
The Makabayan bloc in the House said in a statement that Co’s “damning exposé” directly implicated the President, Romualdez and other high-ranking officials “in the systematic corruption of our national budget through massive illegal insertions.”
Not safe from scandal
“This testimony demolishes any pretense that Marcos Jr. is innocent or unaware of the corruption plaguing his administration. He is not merely complicit—he is the chief architect,” said the statement by ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio, Kabataan Rep. Renee Co, and Gabriela Rep. Sarah Elago.
They demanded, among others, an immediate and independent investigation of the President’s direct role in ordering the insertions and his approval of unprogrammed fund releases.
Kamanggagawa Rep. Eli San Fernando said Co’s testimony proved that “Marcos Jr was not safe from the flood control scandal.”
“This is what we have been saying for a long time: it is impossible for the president to be unaware or have nothing to do with it, contrary to what the Palace says,” he said. “[The] corruption in flood control is massive, systemic, and reaches the highest levels of government.”
Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila De Lima urged Co to return to the country and fully cooperate with the ongoing investigation of the irregularities in flood control and other infrastructure projects.
“He should take an oath and tell the whole truth before the proper forum,” she said.
There were no immediate comments from Romualdez and Bersamin.
ICI Executive Director Brian Keith Hosaka said the commission was “still carefully reviewing and studying” Co’s disclosures and the information from the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings.
An examination by the Inquirer of the documents Co released with his bombshell video, showed that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) got about 80 percent of the total insertions from the 2025 GAA.
The total GAA amount from all the projects listed in Co’s documents was P99.85 billion.
There were 33 listed confirmed bidded flood control-related projects amounting to P2.868 billion. This included the Maculcol Dike in Narciso, Zambales, improvement of drainage systems in Caloocan City, flood control mitigation projects in Carmen, Davao del Norte, Buenavista, Quezon, and Labo, Camarines Norte.
There were 139 confirmed bidded road and bridge developments, which amounted to P14.995 billion.
A chunk of the data from the documents was labeled “Not on DPWH website” and “For checking if bidden or not.” The total amount of those projects was P63.218 billion, P1.945 billion of which were for flood control-related projects that needed checking if they had been bidded.
The documents also noted that P18.768 billion was allotted for agencies like the Philippine Coconut Authority, National Electrification Administration, National Housing Authority, Department of Information and Communications Technology, and Office of the President. —WITH REPORTS FROM GABRIEL PABICO LALU, NYAH GENELLE C. DE LEON, KATHLEEN DE LEON, MARY JOY SALCEDO INQUIRER RESEARCH
