TWO ADMINISTRATIONS — those of Rodrigo Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — exposed the massive systemic corruption at the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), shaking the nation over the grandiose scale of plunder of public funds.
One did nothing other than exposing it, the other promised the country that those guilty would be jailed before Christmas and forced to return stolen public funds.
Christmas came and went, only a few small fries were jailed while some returned small fractions of stolen money and assets.
Legislators that paved the way for massive plunder– through budget insertions and abuse of unprogrammed funds– are still mouthing their supposed innocence and flaunting their continued exemptions from investigations by ICI and the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee on account of inter parliamentary courtesy.
SELECTIVE PURGE
Only those beneath them face public persecution as though the crime stopped at the levels of DPWH personnel and officials and the erring contractors.
In fact, most of the legislators involved in the massive scandal have left the country or are applying for travel permits and visas in the hope of siphoning their funds in foreign banks and other money laundering schemes.
Marcos’ expose in July of the 15 contractors cornering huge public works contracts (mostly flood control projects) that failed to protect people from destructive and fatal floods, was at first hugely welcomed by the citizenry, as a token of his innocence and sincerity in cleaning up the bureaucracy.
TOOTHLESS, UNFUNDED
Interestingly, public optimism is rapidly eroding, as members of the toothless Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) have been resigning in succession.
The resignation of three ICI members in a span of three months has been mainly attributed to the failure of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to equip the commission with sufficient power to prosecute.
Since its creation (by virtue of an executive order) the ICI has yet to receive funds, which made it doubly hard for the commission to deliver results.
ICI was decimated to a fact-finding commission that is limited to submitting recommendations to the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice (DOJ) for the filing of appropriate criminal and civil cases.
THE GRAND THEFT
Since 2022, the state budget watchdog– the Commission on Audit– failed miserably to raise red flags or hold accountable those behind the plunder of DPWH surging funds as the Duterte administration stifled most oversight agencies from performing their tasks.
It was under his term that public work funds, particularly flood control projects, zoomed beyond the imagination of contractors and local governments’ absorptive capacity, thus ending up with mostly ghost or imagined projects, incomplete projects and annually repeating funds for the same projects (many of them imagined or on paper only).
But the DPWH projects increased even more under Marcos– with then Secretary Mark Villar, and his successor the media-hyped Manuel Bonoan– with opaque terms like allocable funds (inaalok) being adopted and abused to the max.
PUBLIC DISTRACTION
Not even the still unresolved death (was it suicide or murder?) of the late DPWH Undersecretary Catalina Cabral made people temporarily forget her involvement in this grand theft.
The largest single-year increase came in 2022, the first full year under Marcos’ administration, when Sunwest secured P16.9 billion in project contracts. This surge continued through 2023 and 2024, reinforcing the company’s dominant role in Bicol’s infrastructure program, the Inquirer reported.
The scale of these awards placed Sunwest at the top of flood-control contractors from July 2022 to May 2025, according to the Malacañang-backed Sumbong sa Pangulo report. During that period alone, the firm obtained ₱10.15 billion across 79 flood-control projects, the paper added.
FINDINGS MATTER
These findings mattered not just because of the amounts, but because flood-control projects are funded, approved, and implemented through a system that relies heavily on congressional appropriations, district engineering offices, and contractor accreditation—layers where political proximity can quietly translate into repeated awards.
The COA only came to life after the probes done by both chambers of Congress– where its complicity through a commissioner’s wife bagging many flood control projects in 2025– was sternly lambasted by the Blue Ribbon Committee.
Even the state-owned Land Bank was vigorously berated by senators for allowing the withdrawal of hundreds of millions of pesos in flood control funds in a single transaction, without raising the red flag.
DECEMBER REPORT
COA began filing 30 fraud audit reports on flood control projects, specifically in DPWH Bulacan district offices, only by December 17. It submitted 21 reports to the ICI and 9 to the Ombudsman covering projects worth P2.5 billion.
The reports described ghost projects or those fully paid but can’t be located, structures built in locations different from those specified in the contracts, and flood-control works whose materials or dimensions did not match those billed.
Many of these projects, auditors said, were awarded to contractors belonging to the same small group identified in Malacañang’s review, including Discaya-owned Amethyst Horizon Builders and General Contractor and Development Corp., as well as firms whose owners were summoned in Senate hearings, such as SYMS Construction Trading owned by Sally Santos and Wawao Builders owned by Mark Allan Arevalo, the Inquirer reported.
PEOPLE’S AUDIT
In Malolos City, residents and local officials conducted their own audit.
Of 106 flood-control projects inspected across 30 barangays, only 54 were either completed (27) or ongoing (27). The rest were classified as nonexistent or “ghost” projects, as they could not be located, while others were found to have substandard materials, were incomplete, or had a reduced project scope.
In a small coastal barangay of Calero, with just 100 households, auditors counted 13 flood-control projects worth P1.4 billion — raising questions on proportionality, planning, and oversight.
Malolos Mayor Christian Natividad—who heads the Malolos City People’s Audit Team (MCPAT) — ordered all suspected ghost and incomplete projects to be declared “crime scenes,” as he also directed all village officials to ban all construction activities, which would just be attempts to cover up suspected anomalies.
TOKEN RESTITUTION
From the estimated P546-billion plundered DPWH funds intended for 10,000 projects, the government has only recovered from restitutions (in exchange for being a state witness) only:
- Luxury vehicles owned by the Discaya couple auctioned in November and December worth P47.7 million for five of the 11 owned by the controversial contractor couple, aside from the seized Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a Bentley Bentayga (both unsold).
- DPWH former assistant district engineer Brice Hernandez’s luxury vehicles, who despite a P70,000 monthly salary had a P30 million Lamborghini Urus and P10.8 million Toyota Supra, which he surrendered to the ICI out of “sincerity,” a black GMC Yukon Denali SUV worth P12 million and P30 million Lamborghini Urus worth P30 million
- Former DPWH Usec. Roberto Bernardo’s bank account containing P7 million
- Bulacan district engineer Henry Alcantara’s P110 million that was surrendered to the DOJ as part of the P300 million he admitted receiving as kickbacks from flood control projects.
FREEZE ORDERS
The government also froze by December P20.3 billion worth of assets, comprising 6,538 bank accounts, 367 insurance policies, 255 motor vehicles, 178 real properties, 16 e-wallet accounts, and three securities accounts, due to suspected ties with dubious public works.
The figures rose steadily with each new court order.
As freeze orders took effect, several figures linked to the flood control controversy began returning large sums they admitted were kickbacks from anomalous infrastructure projects — marking the first concrete recoveries in a scandal that has otherwise been defined by staggering losses.
In November, Acting Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida told reporters that the total restitution figure of P300 million was based on transactions Alcantara acknowledged in his sworn statements. For the remaining P190 million, Vida stated that payment should also be made in cash.
From the DOJ, the cash was transferred to the Bureau of the Treasury, where representatives from Land Bank counted and validated the bills and checks to determine if they were counterfeit or not.
EASY WAY OUT?
The returns continued into December, perhaps for fear of being jailed, as declared by President Marcos.
On December 16, DPWH-NCR engineer Gerard Opulencia returned P40 million in cash to the DOJ in partial fulfillment of P150 million, which he admitted to having skimmed from funds intended for DPWH projects during his term as NCR director.
Prosecutor General Richard Anthony Fadullon said that among the cases under preliminary investigation were flood control projects awarded to SYMS Construction in the towns of Balagtas and Pandi in Bulacan.
He clarified, however, that Opulencia did not receive money from the Bulacan projects but had knowledge of what transpired in Bulacan.
The restitution of funds was based on the transactions he was involved in when he was NCR director,” he added.
SMALLEST FRY
One of the most potential witnesses also followed the trend by returning what she earned from being an errand to the Bulacan district engineers. Her name — Sally Santos.
Santos owned SYMS Construction Trading, which was used by the Bulacan district engineers in the ghost projects. She returned P15 million to the government.
DOJ spokesperson Jose Dominic “Polo” Martinez said the amount formed part of the memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the government and applicant witnesses in the anomalous flood control projects under investigation.
She got funds for renting out to other contractors her company’s license for which she charged three percent in royalties.
MONEY LAUNDERING
The money trail did not end with cars. In September, Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson disclosed documents showing that five DPWH officials and contractors — the Bulacan Group of Contractors, or dubbed the “BGC Boys” — incurred P950 million in gross gambling losses across 13 casinos in Metro Manila, Cebu, and Pampanga.
The so-called BGC Boys include Alcantara, Hernandez, Mendoza, DPWH Engineer II Arjay Domasig, and a contractor identified as Edrick San Diego. The group was found to be using fake driver’s licenses under aliases or assumed identities to gain entry into a casino.
“They weren’t just betting chips; they were betting the people’s money. And instead of building flood control projects, they were building their casino aliases—and possibly laundering money in the process,” Lacson said.
Citing records from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., Lacson detailed billions of pesos in cash-to-chip and chip-to-cash transactions from 2023 to 2025 — amounts far beyond what mid-level government salaries could sustain.
FAR BEYOND GRAFT
Finance Secretary Ralph Recto estimated that anomalous flood-control projects cost the Philippine economy P42.3 billion to P118.4 billion from 2023 to 2025 — the equivalent of 95,000 to 266,000 jobs that could have been created, wages that could have been earned, and livelihoods that never materialized.
Put together, the figures tell a story that goes beyond corruption cases and court orders — P545.64 billion was spent; more than P350 billion lacked clear descriptions; P100 billion flowed to just 15 contractors; P31 billion clustered in one contractor network and P15.7 billion in another; P2.5 billion was flagged as ghost projects; P950 million vanished into casinos; about P1 billion was allegedly moved in suitcases; and around P20 billion has since been frozen, the Inquirer reported.
As has been reported, an estimated P3 trillion had been lost to corruption from 2016 to 2025 – including the billions of pesos in unprogrammed funds and insertions by legislators for their favored districts and contractors with of course an expected SOP (kickback as their share of the loot).
So far just a few have been jailed and even less were formally charged in court.
THE UNTOUCHABLES
Interestingly, the proponents to the dubious scheme have remained free — the legislators laughing their way to the banks and exiting the country to hide their money in havens for illicit funds.
Some have even invested in cryptocurrency, which is harder to trace and confiscate.
Will our country be any better in 2026 considering the return of insertions (under a different name and form) despite the public’s rage against this practice”?
Maybe, but only after five or 10 bigtime corrupt legislators (including the pork barrel honchos) are jailed.