Probe flood control projects in Ilocos Norte and Leyte, ASAP!
THE pompously named Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) should immediately investigate the hundreds of purported flood-control projects in President Marcos Jr.’s home province of Ilocos Norte and those in his cousin, former speaker Martin Romualdez’s Leyte.
It is inconceivable that these were spared from the same scam exposed in Bulacan, involving billions of pesos in supposed flood-mitigation projects. There, corrupt officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) released funds to favored contractors for nonexistent or incomplete projects, resulting in massive flooding across the province.
If the ICI does not move at once, it becomes complicit in the flood-control scam. Reports claim that DPWH officials and contractors in Leyte and Ilocos Norte have been burning the midnight oil in recent weeks to cover their tracks, with many records even allegedly destroyed.
The ICI members should realize that ignoring the Leyte and Ilocos Norte projects makes them part of a massive cover-up scheme by Marcos and Romualdez. They risk being judged as harshly as DPWH officials, contractors like the Discayas, and even senators Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva, who have been dragged into the scandal in recent weeks. This “independent commission” idea is obviously from Marcos Sr.’s playbook: in 1983, he set up a “Fact-Finding Board”( also called the Agrava Commission) on the Benigno Aquino Jr. assassination, which conveniently concluded that it was a military conspiracy and had nothing to do with the strongman himself.
Modus
The modus operandi in Leyte and Ilocos Norte is clear: stealing taxpayers’ money through ghost projects, through mere sign-offs by corrupt officials.
Romualdez’s accomplice in funneling state funds to flood-control projects is party-list Representative Zaldy Co. His family firm, Sunwest, bagged 19 projects in Leyte — where Romualdez, his wife, and son are representatives — worth at least P8 billion.
Co is also one of the main contractors of the 28-kilometer Leyte Tide Embankment Project, among the biggest flood-mitigation undertakings in the country that it’s been dubbed “The Great Wall of Leyte.” Intended as a wall to block storm surges as that which was triggered by the Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013. The project, which spans Tacloban City, and the towns of Palo, Tanauan and Tolosa, started in 2016 but remains only 40 percent completed, and its estimated cost has zoomed from P8 billion in 2016 to the present P16 billion. Marcos himself once visited the site last January and scolded the DPWH for failing to finish it after nine years.
Equally big in the Leyte project is Premium Megastructures, where Francis Lloyd Chua is a major shareholder. Chua’s other firm, Industry Holdings and Development Corp., owns shares in EEI Corp., where Romualdez holds a 20 percent stake. This alone makes Romualdez potentially liable for graft: he indirectly holds an interest in a company with a construction contract in his own district.
Is it possible that Romualdez didn’t make money out of these billions of pesos project? Only if you believe that his uncle, the strongman Marcos, didn’t make a single centavo in graft in his 13-year one-man rule.
Ilocos
In Ilocos Norte, companies owned by the Discaya couple — who admitted before the Senate that they had paid bribes to 21 congressmen to secure contracts — cornered P2.6 billion worth of projects, making them the biggest single contractor in Marcos’ home province. Their swagger, especially the arrogance displayed by Mrs. Discaya at the hearings, likely comes from this powerful backing from the very top of government.
From 2022 to 2025, Ilocos Norte received over P10 billion for flood-control projects — nearly 224 in total. This placed it among the top provinces nationwide in both project count and aggregate value, despite its relatively small population and area.
The ICI’s supposed probe is mere PR, designed to drag on until the end of Marcos’ term — and away from him. For reality check: it took the Commission on Audit (COA) three years (2010–2013), mobilizing 300 auditors, to uncover 772 ghost NGO projects funded by congressmen’s pork-barrel funds, or state funds allocated to their districts in the Napoles scam.
DPWH insiders estimate there may be at the very least 1,000 ghost flood-control projects. Unlike the ICI, COA has been a standing institution since 1973, with around 6,000 auditors, from which it easily pulled out 300 for the pork-barrel scam investigations.
How many auditors does the ICI have? Just one so far: the managing partner of the SGV accounting firm, whom Marcos appointed as commissioner. Can she pull out auditors from her firm? Only if the ICI agrees to SGV’s P2,000-per-hour fees for accountants. Will COA second its auditors? Maybe, maybe not — since most of its auditors are resident auditors already monitoring each agency.
Dee
Will the rich, noisy anti-corruption protesters, like Francis Joseph Aquino Dee, a grandson of former president Cory Aquino, ask his billionaire clan to contribute funds to pay accountants and investigators’ per diems? Will the Makati Business Club and similar associations of the rich? They never put their money where their mouth is.
And this isn’t just about accountants. Flood-control scams require skilled, police-type investigators — people who can interrogate suspects, conduct ocular inspections, properly document all these and notarize findings, and file airtight reports.
I’m afraid the fiery Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon will one day, in the near future, look behind his back and realize to his horror that no one is behind him in his crusade.
It is commendable, though, that Dizon managed to get the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to freeze the assets of “26 public works officials and contractors.” But based on the Discayas’ testimony that they paid grease money to 20 congressmen, and other revelations, the bank accounts of at least 1,000 DPWH officials and lawmakers should be frozen. Can AMLC’s 25 lawyers handle this? The law requires that freeze orders be lifted after 20 days if no case is pursued, though courts can extend them up to six months. But these lawyers are already swamped with over 700 other freeze orders (on such individuals’ assets as purportedly fake Filipinos).
We keep hearing Vince Dizon rage against DPWH corruption. But if entire engineering districts, like those in Bulacan, turn out to be rotten to the core — from district director down to assistant engineers — who will supervise ongoing public works, especially flood-control projects? The janitors? Will Marcos, in his next state of the nation address, blame the investigations as sabotaging or delaying flood control projects?
This is how disastrous for the nation an incompetent, lazy, or corrupt presidency results in just three years. Perhaps it would be best or cost-efficient for us taxpayers for Marcos to step down, or be deposed, dismantle the DPWH through a revolutionary government, and rebuild from scratch an institution that can honestly oversee our infrastructure.
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Probe flood control projects in Ilocos Norte and Leyte, ASAP!
Source: Breaking News PH
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