Zaldy Co captured in Czech republic–Marcos
Fugitive Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, the former lawmaker who is considered to be among the masterminds of the trillion-peso flood control and infrastructure anomalies last year, has been captured in the Czech Republic after nine months in hiding abroad and is set to be deported back to the Philippines to face graft charges.
President Marcos on Thursday evening confirmed the arrest of the elusive Co.
“He is now detained in Prague after crossing into the Czech Republic without proper documentation and is currently in the custody of Czech authorities,” Mr. Marcos posted on his official Facebook account.
Mr. Marcos did not say what documents Co did not have.
The President said Manila was in close coordination with the Czech government to ensure that all legal processes were followed and to arrange for his return to the Philippines “at the soonest possible time.”
“We will keep the public informed as developments unfold,” he added.
Philippine authorities said in December that Co was hiding in Portugal.
The Department of Foreign Affairs canceled Co’s Philippine passport on Dec. 10, 2025, on orders of the Sandiganbayan, which had issued an arrest warrant for him in connection with corruption case, and in compliance with Republic Act No. 8239, or the Philippine Passport Act of 1996.
The arrest warrant was intended to force him to either return to the Philippines on his own or to be arrested by foreign authorities and deported to the country to face the cases against him in relation to the public works corruption scandal.
Philippine authorities believe that Co had acquired a “golden visa” from Portugal under a Portuguese government program, which grants non-citizens of the European Union a five-year residency permit in exchange for making investments amounting to at least 500,000 euros (P35 million). This would have allowed him to move freely around Europe.
Co is a central figure as one of the masterminds in the corruption scandal for his role as the chair of the powerful House appropriations committee during the previous 19th Congress from 2022 until he was removed in January 2025.
He was accused of receiving billions of pesos in kickbacks from contractors and Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials who testified in congressional probes into flood control projects. He vehemently denied the allegations.
His whereabouts remained unknown since he left for abroad in July just before the start of the congressional inquiries.
Due to the alleged anomalies linked to him, House Speaker Faustino Dy III revoked Co’s travel clearance on Sept. 18, and asked him to return to Manila within 10 days to answer the allegations linking him to questionable budget insertions and kickbacks from public works contractors.
He refused to return to the country due to alleged threats to his life and his family.
Sunwest
His company, Sunwest Inc., has been linked to substandard or non-existent flood control projects. Investigators believe his roles as a member of Congress and as a contractor overlapped, allowing him to use his position as lawmaker to secure government contracts.
Co is facing a warrant of arrest issued by Sandiganbayan along with 15 officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and Sunwest, who were indicted by the Ombudsman for graft and malversation of public funds over an anomalous P289.5 million flood control project in Oriental Mindoro. About 85 percent of the project had already been paid for by the government.
The Philippine government requested the Interpol to upgrade the “blue notice” it had issued against Co to a “red notice” to arrest him and start extradition proceedings.
Of the 16 ordered arrested by the antigraft court, nine are under custody. The seven others, including Co, remain at large.
Co’ whereabouts has been unclear since he left the country in July last year supposedly for medical reasons.
Despite calls from the House leadership and Mr. Marcos himself to return home, Co refused.
While abroad, he resigned as the first representative of Ako Bicol party-list on Sept. 29, 2025.
In November, he started posting on his official Facebook page a series of video statements pointing to former House Speaker Martin Romualdez and the President to were the real masterminds of the billions of pesos of alleged graft-riddled insertions in the 2025 budget.
He showed pictures of dozens of bags filled with cash—kickbacks to be delivered to various personalities, including Romualdez and the President.
P100-B contracts
He implicated other members of the first family, including first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and the President’s eldest son, House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos in various corruption allegations. Malacañang denied what it claimed to be Co’s baseless allegations.
The flood control corruption scandal unraveled in August 2025 after the President named 15 companies out of over 2000, including several owned by Co and his family, that were awarded P100 billion in flood control mitigation contracts. The amount represented about 18 percent of the entire P545-billion budget for the government flood program from July 2022 to May 2025.
An Inquirer review of the dataset published on Malacañang’s “Sumbong sa Pangulo” website showed that the Albay-based Sunwest had 79 projects totaling around P10.15 billion from 2022 to 2024.
Eighteen of these were in Romblon, 11 in Leyte, and 10 in Camarines Sur and Oriental Mindoro.
His brother, Christopher “Kito” Co (also a former Ako Bicol lawmaker), cofounded both Sunwest and another company on the list, Hi-Tone Construction & Development Corp., bagged 61 projects totaling P4.86 billion.
Co was mentioned by the Discaya couple during a Senate blue ribbon committee hearing as among the lawmakers who solicited funds from contractors after they had won government projects.
Told to ‘stay out’
In one of his videos posted on November 14, Co said that he was set to return to the Philippines after his medical checkup abroad but was told by Romualdez to stay out of the country, allegedly on the President’s directive.
“I stayed silent for a long time because I was given a direct order: ‘do not return to the Philippines and just stay quiet.’ I left on July 19, 2025 for my medical check-up, planning to return after the President’s SONA. But as I was about to come back, former Speaker Martin Romualdez called me and said to stay out of the country, and that I would be well taken care of as instructed by the President,” he added.
“I kept my mouth shut and complied. But what I didn’t know was that what they meant by ‘we will take care of you’ was that I would be used as a scapegoat in their anti-corruption campaign. They made me the poster boy of their own lies,” he said in the video.
“Now, I will no longer stay silent; I will reveal the whole truth. There are receipts, evidence, and names,” he added.
On Nov. 26, 2025, Mr. Marcos said that the lawyer of Co attempted to prevent the cancellation of Co’s passport.
“Zaldy Co’s lawyer approached us and tried to blackmail us, saying that if we didn’t cancel his passport, he wouldn’t release the video anymore,” he said in a video statement posted on his social media account. —WITH A REPORT INQUIRER RESEARCH
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