Dizon: Leviste ‘insertions’ claim baseless, malicious
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon on Tuesday rejected allegations made by Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste linking him to supposed insertions for flood control projects in the national budget.
“[Secretary Dizon] categorically denies the baseless and malicious allegations made by [Leviste] regarding supposed ‘insertions’ or ‘allocables,’” the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) said in a statement.
Leviste earlier accused Dizon of making insertions in the controversial infrastructure projects funded through the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), a state agency that the DPWH secretary used to head from 2016 to 2021 during the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte.
In a separate statement, the BCDA also shut down Leviste’s allegations, saying “no such funds exist within BCDA projects or its authority. Claims to the contrary are unsupported by evidence and false.”
“BCDA does not receive or control discretionary funds and does not participate in budget insertions. All projects are financed only through approved government programs, released through the National Treasury, implemented under the General Appropriations Act, and governed by procurement laws and Commission on Audit rules,” the BCDA added.
The agency welcomed any investigation, saying the BCDA’s records are open to oversight institutions.
Timing suspicious
The DPWH said the timing of Leviste’s allegations “raises suspicions,” after the agency’s staff reported that the Batangas lawmaker “forcefully and illegally” took the files of the late Public Works Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral which supposedly contained data on infrastructure allocations.
Dizon had earlier denied that he had authenticated the documents held by Leviste, stressing that he had never seen them. This prompted Malacañang to call for a probe of how the lawmaker got hold of the so-called Cabral files.
The Office of the Ombudsman is set to examine the files in Leviste’s possession.
Leviste began releasing the data contained in the files on Dec. 24, almost a week after Cabral died from a fall in a ravine along Kennon Road in Tuba, Benguet.
By Christmas Day, Leviste had released data showing the DPWH budget allocations per district, province and region from 2023 to 2026 amounting to around P3.5 trillion.
The files showed that the biggest allocations by region went to Central Luzon with P406.9 billion, then Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) with P341.8 billion, and then Bicol with P272.3 billion. The summary also revealed unprogrammed appropriations from 2023 to 2024 amounting to P213.8 billion.
Release the files
Meanwhile, an anticorruption alliance urged Leviste to release the full “Cabral files” so these may be used as evidence to file charges against officials and contractors involved in anomalies in the government’s flood control and other infrastructure projects.
“All files … related to corruption, those held by Leviste, if he really has any, should be released in full so we can review and examine them. If this is credible evidence, it can be used to file a case, so that all those involved can be imprisoned,” David San Juan, convener of Taumbayan Ayaw sa Magnanakaw at Abusado Network Alliance (Tama Na), told reporters.
San Juan also asked the government to secure Cabral’s documents, particularly those that serve as evidence of corruption in the flood control scandal, as the Filipino people “deserve to know the truth.”
Files with Ombudsman
The DPWH on Dec. 23 surrendered Cabral’s office computer and piles of documents to the Office of the Ombudsman. Among the documents were 10 years’ worth of files that include “requests for consideration in the programming of NEP (National Expenditure Program),” the DPWH said during the turnover.
The Ombudsman moved to secure sensitive documents from Cabral, a key figure first in the congressional inquiries and later in the criminal investigation into anomalous public works projects.
She became a focus of the probe for being privy to the “requests” coming from lawmakers in the preparation of the yearly budget of the DPWH. Cabral, whose career in the DPWH spanned 30 years, resigned on Sept. 14 in the middle of the congressional hearings on the flood control mess.
