Lawyers and prosecutors preparing the charges against lawmakers, public works officials and private contractors related to the trillion-peso anomalous flood control projects ought to study the Sandiganbayan decisions acquitting three senators, one after another, of plunder and graft cases filed in 2013.
With my little knowledge of law and years of experience covering proceedings of the anti-graft court, it seems to me that the resolutions did not say that the crime of plunder did not happen. It was just that the prosecution failed to prove the guilt of the senators beyond reasonable doubt, meaning, the evidence presented was not convincing enough to believe without any doubt that the accused was guilty of the crime.
The Department of Public Works and Highways has filed complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman against several officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways and contractors related to anomalous flood control projects in Bulacan, La Union and Davao Occidental. The initial charges involved malversation of public funds through falsification of public documents. No plunder yet.
Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon had said some of the alleged perpetrators of the flood control scandal — including former DPWH district engineers Henry Alcantara, Brice Hernandez and Jaypee Mendoza — could be in jail by Christmas.
Anti-corruption advocates are impatient that the investigations don’t seem to be getting anywhere. The closed-door hearings by the Independent Commission for Infrastructure raise speculations and concerns regarding its credibility, impartiality and independence.
It has been almost three months since the president ordered the investigations but the suspected masterminds have yet to emerge. Protesters want to see the so-called big fishes — high-ranking officials in Congress and the Marcos Cabinet — charged in court and jailed. So far, only former district engineers and contractors are held in custody and facing complaints. No Cabinet member, no senator or congressman has been charged. Names of those mentioned in the House and Senate hearings to have supposedly received kickbacks from anomalous flood control projects were merely included in the hold departure order of the Bureau of Immigration.
But, as we have seen from the 2013 PDAF scam, the public should not find satisfaction in seeing complaints filed, suspects held in custody or even charging them in court and detaining them while the cases are on trial. It is crucial to keep in check that the appropriate cases are filed with sufficient material and testimonial evidence to ensure conviction and that court proceedings will not last years, or even decades. Long years of litigation mean cases fall into so many hands, given reassignments of prosecutors and justices, and their appreciation of facts, issues and testimonies may change.
People may also lose interest, or even forget about it come election time. Just like what happened in the 2013 PDAF cases, some so-called big fishes were charged and detained, but were still reelected and eventually acquitted due to the failure of the prosecution to present proof beyond reasonable doubt to convict them. It is another thing to send to jail those whose names may have been used by their underlings, who could have connived in committing plunder.
The anomalies in the PDAF cases happened between 2004 and 2010, during the administration of now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was also arrested in October 2012 and kept under hospital arrest for nearly five years in connection with charges that she misused funds of the state-run Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office during her presidency. Again, the court found the evidence against her weak.
Former president Joseph Estrada also faced plunder charges and was convicted by the Sandiganbayan in 2007 for accumulating approximately $4 billion in ill-gotten wealth from illegal gambling, stock manipulation and kickbacks. But barely a week after his conviction, he was pardoned by Arroyo in October 2007.
In the PDAF case, the 101-year-old Juan Ponce Enrile, currently President Bongbong Marcos’ chief presidential legal counsel, incumbent senator Jinggoy Estrada and former senator Bong Revilla were charged in 2013 and indicted for plunder in 2014. After years of court proceedings, the acquittals were handed down one after another.
One indication that plunder did take place in at least one of the cases was the conviction of Janet Lim Napoles, a businesswoman believed to have masterminded the P10-billion Priority Development Assistance Fund scam, and lawyer Richard Cambe, then chief of staff of Revilla.
Although Revilla was acquitted of plunder by a split vote of 3-2 by the Sandiganbayan Special First Division in December 2018, the court did order him and his co-accused to return P124.5 million in public funds as civil liability. His lawyers, however, argued that only Napoles and Cambe should pay the amount to the national treasury, citing Article 100 of the Revised Penal Code in contending that only those found criminally liable for a felony should be held civilly liable. In 2021, Revilla was cleared of 16 charges of graft for insufficient evidence.
Cambe suffered a stroke and died in April 2021, after serving two years of the sentence for plunder at the National Bilibid Prisons, while Revilla was elected back to the Senate in 2019. Revilla lost his reelection bid in the 2025 midterms. His lawyers attributed the defeat to viral posts on social media regarding his refusal to remit the P124.5 million to the National Treasury, even as they maintained he was not required to return any money.
Revilla was accused of allocating P224 million from his “pork barrel” or PDAF, to bogus non-government organizations owned by Napoles.
Enrile was acquitted of plunder in October 2024. The Sandiganbayan decision said the prosecution failed to prove he received at least P50 million in kickbacks — the threshold for plunder. Last Friday, Oct. 24, the anti-graft court acquitted Enrile, his former chief of staff Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes, and Napoles of 15 counts of graft over their alleged involvement in pocketing P172.8 million of his PDAF allocation. Napoles is serving a jail term for a separate plunder conviction for being the alleged mastermind of the P10-billion PDAF scam.
The new corruption cases involving more than a trillion pesos of misused funds for flood control projects must not end in the same manner as the PDAF acquittals.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
This column also appeared in The Manila Times.
