(Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to underscore that Soledad Eusebio, wife of former Pasig City Mayor Vicente Eusebio , was the cousin of Mr. Cruz who adopted Sarah and Liza. Mayor Eusebio was not the maternal uncle of Sarah Discaya as previously written here.
(The correction was prompted by the following message thru Facebook of Kirsten Chiara Bernice Eusebio and Rosanna Eusebio-Baroa:
(“I am related to the Eusebios in Pasig. Niece to be exact since Vicente Eusebio and my grandfather are first cousins while my Mum (Eusebio maiden name) and Bobby Eusebio are 2nd cousins.
(“Just to set the record straight, not to coverup for anything!
(“The Eusebios have no blood relations with Sarah Cruz Discaya.
(“Former Mayor Vicente Eusebio has only 2 siblings, “Naning” and a girl, forgot the 1st name, but she was married to a Maybituin.
(“Who knows, Sarah might be name dropping the Eusebio name just to take advantage.
(“Mayor Eusebio”s wife, Sol, was a Cruz and the stepfather who adopted Sarah is a cousin of Mrs. Sol C. Eusebio.
(“And even if the affinity is thru the Cruzside, thru the stepfather, who adopted them and whose surname they took,they’re still not the biological daughters, and therefore there’s no blood relation with the Cruzes nor the Eusebios.”)
Unknown to me, a friend of many years turned out to be a family friend of long standing with the Sarah Discaya family. My friend was careful about passing information for fear of being monitored by the family, especially by Discaya’s husband Curlee. There was even the fear of being killed, the friend told me.
Checking the information the friend shared, there were noticeable details not disclosed during the two controversial interviews Sarah and Curlee Discaya gave to broadcast journalists Julius Babao and Korina Sanchez. From its inception, something was derelict when both interviews were plotted as “lifestyle” presentations. Thus, there was zero investigative angle when it could have progressed to a more truthful train of thought than just the spectacle of having a Rolls Royce umbrella.
On that light, it is the statement of the journalist Chelo Banal Formoso that bears heavily on the media ethics of the Discaya interview:
“Let’s say the Discaya piece was not a paid placement. They claim that this was a ‘lifestyle’ feature. Ok, good. But the second they saw that huge garage and those many super expensive cars, that lifestyle story should have instantly turned into an investigative story.”
Chelo more than summed up the blunder. Both interviews looked the other way despite knowing that the Discayas were contractors of government projects. It was like they were casual to the ostentatious displays of wealth. To have such journalists without any critical lens is a cause for public alarm. These two should leave their profession in sack clothes.
Perhaps that was one reason why people who had information about the Discayas as my friend had decided to come out of the woodworks. No doubt, the Discaya story is now of transcendental national importance that has lead to a procession of other government-funded public works scandals not excluding the nepo babies of these filthy rich families of thieving contractors.
There was this question of Babao that could have changed the direction of the interview. He asked Sarah Discaya: What was their gateway to success? Unhesitatingly, Discaya answered without responsibility: “Nung nag DPWH kami” (When we started to have contracts with the Department of Public Works and Highways).
My friend said that was an incomplete picture. “The Discayas started their lucrative career when the mayor of Pasig city helped them with contracts for the city.” Who was that city mayor of Pasig?
We digress a bit to London. There were two sisters born successively out of wedlock from different fathers to a Filipina chambermaid working in a domestic household. By birth, they are British citizens. When the mother later married a Filipino by the surname of Cruz, he gave the two daughters his surname. And so they were Cezarah Cruz and Liza Cruz. The Cruz stepfather died a few years ago.
When they reached adulthood, both Sarah and Liza worked as domestic help, with Liza working a second job as dental assistant. After the 9/11 tragedies in 2001, the Cruz family came to dire financial straits. They decided to come home to the Philippines, in their family abode in barangay Bambang near the Pasig public market.
In Pasig, Sarah met an unemployed man named Pacifico “Curlee” Discaya II, also a resident of Pasig. The two were later faced with the possibility of marriage when Sarah was on the family way. They then lived dependently with Sarah’s and Liza’s mother. Unemployment was their bane. It was about this time when the Discayas sought help from the mayor.
The mayor was no ordinary one. Vicente P. Eusebio started his dynastic hold on Pasig city hall in 1980 to 1986 when he was vice mayor to Mayor Emiliano Caruncho Jr. He finally became mayor from 1992 to 2001. His wife Soledad C. Eusebio succeeded him from 2001 to 2004.
Soledad Eusebio was the cousin of the stepfather who gave Cezarah and Liza the Cruz name. Though not related by blood to the Eusebios, the adopted sisters had close relations with Pasig’s political family.
Uncle Enteng became mayor again from 2004 to 2007. That was the time the Cruzes asked for his help. The mayor’s offer was very generous: he gave them all the construction projects in Pasig. Where did the capital come from? Certainly not from the jobless Discayas. Eusebio himself could have provided the capital from ill-gotten government money. Overnight, the Discaya construction firm became Class A. The other possibility was that the firm was a dummy corporation of the Eusebios.
The dynastic grip of the Eusebios in Pasig city is a very curious case. They made a literal merry-go-round of the Pasig city mayorship. Robert (Bobby) succeeded his father from 2007 to 2013. From 2013 to 2016, the mayor was Bobby’s wife, Maria Belen (Maribel) Andaya Eusebio. Maribel herself came from a political family from Naga city; a brother was the late congressman Rolando Andaya Jr. Bobby returned as mayor from 2016 to 2019. And that was the last of the Eusebios when Vico Sotto became mayor beginning in 2019. Realize now what mountains of malgovernance Vico had to untangle.
Clearly, Sarah’s run for city mayor this last election of 2025 was an effort to reclaim city hall for and in behalf of the Eusebios. She had the means. By this time, their wealth had multipled a billion fold. That was because cousin Bobby was even more generous to them as city mayor than his father. Under Bobby, the Discayas expanded by founding more construction firms, the better to give Pasig city biddings a semblance of competition. But they were all Discaya-owned construction companies.
Sarah’s sister Liza Cruz Castillo works as purchasing manager of Saint Gerrard Construction General Contractor and Development Corporation, one of the firms the Discaya couple created. Liza is tasked with purchases of heavy equipment. St. Gerrard was blacklisted by the DPWH in 2020 – for a period of only one year. The company was named after the eldest Discaya son Gerrard.
How do you solve a problem like the Discayas? All their construction firms must be delisted from any government project in perpetuity. Cases of plunder must be filed against them. All these expensive cars in their Noah’s Ark of a garage (because each model has two of a kind) must be seized and sold by government.
But there’s a caveat. With all their government-funded wealth, the Cruz sisters can easily take flight as British citizens. Is the government acting now to prevent another miscarriage of accountability?
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.