Flood Control Corruption: A Year Later, Probes Stall Amidst Allegations of Massive Embezzlement

One year after President Marcos shamed officials and contractors whom he said stole from government-funded flood-control projects, the country has yet to come to grips with the scale of the thievery and who, at the highest levels of power, were responsible. The amounts involved are staggering. Senator Panfilo Lacson, who led the Senate’s probe on flood control projects, estimated that about P180 billion allocated for flood control had been diverted to ghost projects since 2016. He added that even before construction, up to 60% of the allocated funds had already been lost to corruption. But that’s not all. Government engineers revealed during congressional hearings that lawmakers got kickbacks from nearly all public works projects, including roads, streetlighting, multipurpose buildings, and more. According to Greenpeace, as much as P1 trillion could have been lost to graft in flood control and other projects tagged as mitigating the impact of climate change. And that’s just for 2023 to 2025. Congressional probes in the past year showed that such thievery was possible only because the country’s public works delivery system operated like organized crime, with legislators, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials, and contractors colluding to steal from the country’s coffers even as ordinary Filipinos suffered from devastating floods each typhoon season. The investigations showed how lawmakers and executive officials inserted public works projects in the national budget on the condition that they would receive kickbacks from those projects. DPWH engineers acted as go-betweens with public works contractors who offered to pay kickbacks to secure government contracts. The same engineers collected the payoffs and got a small share for themselves; later, they delivered the balance—in cash and packed in suitcases—to the aides of the legislators who were the project proponents. These deliveries took place in the parking lots of posh hotels or lawmakers’ homes in some of Manila’s most exclusive villages. In the weeks following last year’s SONA, angry citizens pelted mud at the properties of notorious DPWH contractors Pacifico and Sara Discaya. Then, they protested in front of Congress, raged on the streets of Manila, marched to EDSA, and mounted rallies in several parts of the country to air their main demand: put all the culprits behind bars, regardless of their grip on power and political color. “Mahiya naman kayo!” President Marcos said during his State of the Nation Address in Congress. But is shaming enough? And will the president, who started it all, also be ensnared in the ever-widening scandal? In this piece, we follow the trail of accountability in the largest corruption scandal in recent Philippine memory. 1. Who are being charged in court? Based on our tally from publicly available records and announcements, at least 45 are currently facing charges in the Sandiganbayan and various regional trial courts. Two are current members of Congress, another two are former lawmakers, 33 are former DPWH officials, eight are contractors. First to take the hit was former Ako Bicol Rep. and House appropriations committee chairperson Elizaldy Co, currently at large, but who has been slapped with graft and malversation charges for an alleged substandard road dike project in Mindoro. The Sandiganbayan issued warrants of arrest for him and officials from DPWH Region IV-B in November 2025 after the Office of the Ombudsman brought the case to the anti-graft court. In December, the Lapu-Lapu City Regional Trial Court issued warrants of arrest for contractor Sarah Discaya, her niece who is also a contractor, and DPWH officials over an alleged ghost flood-control project in Davao Occidental. Uswag Ilonggo Rep. James “Jojo” Ang Jr. is the latest individual that the Office of the Ombudsman has prosecuted due to conflict of interest over public works contracts. Ang is linked to two Iloilo-based public works contractors according to a Rappler investigation. Four individuals have so far been admitted to the state witness protection program. Three are former DPWH officials and one is a Bulacan-based contractor alleged to have fraudulent flood-control projects. Roberto Bernardo (former DPWH undersecretary) Henry Alcantara (former district engineer, Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office) Gerald Opulencia (former regional director, DPWH-National Capital Region) Sally Santos (contractor, SYMS Construction Trading) In June, the Ombudsman said it wanted to make former DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan state witness. 2. Who are still undergoing investigation? At least 43 more individuals are either being investigated by the Office of the Ombudsman, had been referred by the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) to the investigating body for further investigation, or both. Three of these are sitting senators, two are former senators, four are aides of former and sitting senators, eight are sitting congresspersons, two are ex-congresspersons, one is a Commission on Audit commissioner, three are contractors, eight are private individuals linked to Leyte representative and presidential cousin Martin Romualdez, and the rest are DPWH officials. Thus far, Romualdez is one of the highest-level officials being investigated by the Ombudsman’s office. In a complaint-affidavit filed on July 20, Ombudsman investigators accused Romualdez of receiving P56 billion pesos worth of payoffs from government projects between 2022 to and 2025, or when he was still House Speaker. The complaint was based on information Co made public on Facebook and also on congressional testimony from his former bodyguards who claimed they delivered the cash in luggage to Romualdez’s lawmaker’s aides. Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla said that his office continues to look into all those recommended for further investigation by the ICI. Marcos had formed the three-member commission in September in order to probe failed public works projects since 2016. The commission lasted just seven months, with most hearings held behind closed doors, and submitted all its findings to the Office of the Ombudsman on March 13 this year; it concluded its activities on March 31. Dizon, who took the helm of the DPWH in September 2025, also filed complaints against engineers and staff of the Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office and two contractors before the Ombudsman. In November last year, Dizon and the ICI jointly recommended the filing of criminal charges against eight congressmen who have ties with contractors. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, said that as of March this year, it was handling 24 active cases related to the corruption scandal but did not elaborate on the personalities involved in each one. The larger question, however, is this: The 2026 budget enacted after the flood-control scandal drastically reduced the funding for flood-control projects. But it still