Flood control testimonies pour in

Finally, more than a year after the multibillion-peso flood control scandal first broke, the Sandiganbayan is laying bare the revolting details of the country’s biggest corruption scandal—a scheme once hatched in secrecy and collusion, now out in the open.

While we had a preview of the testimonies of some of the main actors during the televised public hearings of the Senate blue ribbon committee (BRC) last year, it’s only now that the different divisions of the antigraft court, which are hearing the plunder, graft, and malversation of public funds cases lodged against several former and current lawmakers and Department of Public Works And Highways (DPWH) officials, are piecing together the damning testimonies of state witnesses.

For justice to be done—for us taxpayers whose hard-earned money footed the bill for the government’s upkeep, yet billions were discreetly funneled to bankroll the ultra-extravagant lifestyles of some of our elected officials and government executives—the Sandiganbayan justices must see the bigger picture of how Congress, in cahoots with DPWH executives and private contractors, “gamed the system” through the national budget, as Ombudsman Crispin Remulla aptly said.

Testimonies at the Sandiganbayan about billions of taxpayer money allegedly pocketed by the accused in the flood control scandal aren’t trickling in; they’re pouring in like a flood.

The amounts witnesses cite may sound like old news to the jaded, but they’re staggering enough to provoke revulsion in us, especially among the working middle class that keeps the economy running on honest work and pay, while our taxes fund government expenses, including those incurred by functionaries who are either corrupt or inefficient, or both—to the last centavo.

Last Tuesday, two revelations made headlines worth our attention.

First, the amount one government prosecution state witness received: former DPWH Bulacan district engineer Henry Alcantara allegedly got at least P5 billion in kickbacks from contractors, intended for project proponents (aka lawmakers).

Alcantara’s former staff member, Carlo Rivera, revealed the P5.56 billion kickback on Tuesday before the Sandiganbayan Third Division. The kickback came from about P35 billion in DPWH projects in Bulacan from 2022 to 2025: P14.1 billion (2024), P12.9 billion (2023), P7.3 billion (2025), and P519 million (2022).

Rivera testified that he delivered the “commitments” (kickbacks) to Alcantara’s office and personally followed up to collect cash “commitments” from contractors.

Besides lawmakers now in the dock, Alcantara and former DPWH Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo admitted to personally benefiting from these kickbacks. Their boss, former DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan, has been discharged as an accused in a plunder case and has become a state witness, but his other graft case remains, though it’s bailable. The DPWH trio are up against their former subordinates and private contractors, including one former senator, one sitting senator, and four House members who, as lawmakers, held the power of the purse. They are among the 52 individuals being tried at the Sandiganbayan.

Restitution. In exchange for the state’s decision not to prosecute them further, they must make restitution for pocketing their share of the kickbacks: Bernardo returned P500 million; Alcantara, P181.4 million (against his total pledge of P300 million); suspended National Capital Region district engineer Gerard Opulencia, P140 million; and SYMS Construction Trading owner Sally Santos, P20 million.

No word yet on whether Bonoan will do so, but he must, in the interest of justice, after prosecutors dropped him as a co-accused in the P573-million plunder and graft case before the Fifth Division of the Sandiganbayan. If Bernardo could return half a billion pesos to the national coffers, then his erstwhile boss should do the same, but we wonder how much Bonoan would be willing to part with.

Bernardo testified at the BRC hearing on Nov. 15, 2025 that Bonoan would get as much as 15 percent as an average “commitment” from “his own reserved allocations,” referring to at least P5 billion in allocations every year from 2023 through 2025. (see “Bonoan, Cabral operated kickback system in DPWH–Ex-Usec. Bernardo,” Nation, 11/14/25).

Leadership fund. Second, Bonoan testified last Tuesday before the Fifth Division about the so-called leadership fund, a once-secret budgetary item that senators and some favored legislators could draw on for up to P1 billion. According to him, senators could use the ad hoc leadership fund to finance their pet infrastructure projects through the DPWH.

To refresh our memory, Bonoan first disclosed this leadership fund during a BRC hearing on Sept. 23, 2025. The leadership fund was included within the 50 percent budget ceiling for “legislative allocable” funds in the DPWH budget, which lawmakers can allocate to their priority projects.

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