Freeze orders for everyone – except, of course, Romualdez

THE Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), with the Court of Appeals’ swift approval, has unleashed a barrage of freeze orders against those tied to the ghost flood-control projects. Senators Joel Villanueva and Jinggoy Estrada, Rep. Zaldy Co, dozens of Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials, and private contractors connected to the notorious Discaya couple have all had their bank accounts and assets immobilized.

By Oct. 3, a staggering 1,620 bank accounts, 54 insurance policies, 163 motor vehicles, 40 real properties, and 12 e-wallet accounts were under lock. Earlier orders had already covered 836 bank accounts, 12 e-wallets, 24 insurance policies and 81 vehicles. All told, nearly 2,400 bank accounts have been frozen.

Yet in this massive legal dragnet, one name is glaringly absent: President Marcos Jr.’s cousin and former House speaker Martin Romualdez. Ousted from his powerful post on Sept. 17, his guilt in the ghost flood-control scam — and the hijacking of national budgets from 2023 to 2025 — seems undeniable, waiting only for confirmation through investigations and money-trail evidence.

That has not been done so far.

For all their chest-thumping declarations that they will jail every crook involved, the hysterical Public Works Secretary Vivencio Dizon, the pretentiously named Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI), the justice department, and the National Bureau of Investigation seem terrified of Romualdez. They are merely mounting a grand show — a whitewash designed to protect Romualdez and, ultimately, Marcos himself.

Romualdez has been arrogant enough not to even debunk the allegations, issuing only blanket denials. He has allegedly deployed P100 million to pay off reporters and broadcasters to deflect the accusations against him.

The president hasn’t even claimed his cousin’s innocence. He has kept conspicuously silent. In past controversies, Marcos Jr. was quick to defend Romualdez. Not this time. His silence damns more than it protects; it suggests even he knows the evidence is too heavy to dismiss. Silence has become his survival strategy.

Razor

The truth — if we go by the principle of Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation is often the correct one) — is that Marcos knew what Romualdez was doing and gave the go-signal, thinking his cousin clever enough to pull it off. He wasn’t. Romualdez had proved to be a bungler twice before, in his constitutional-amendment schemes and in his failed plot to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte.

Romualdez likely told Marcos that this “fundraising mechanism” would make the House servile to all his wishes — especially the plot to prevent Sara from assuming the presidency in 2028.

But fate intervened. The 2025 typhoons brought the worst floods in living memory, exposing Marcos’ baseless boast that his administration had completed 5,500 flood-control projects. Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto’s revelations about his political rival, contractor Sarah Discaya, and the TV feature showing the Discaya couple’s collection of 40 luxury cars triggered outrage. The unexpected election of Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, who almost single-handedly pursued the investigation, sealed the scandal’s exposure as the biggest corruption case in Philippine history.

Testimonies have piled up linking Romualdez to budget tampering and insertions. Contractors, DPWH officials, and the Discayas have all implicated him.

Most explosive of all, a Marine officer testified that he delivered 46 suitcases of cash, each containing P48 million — a total of more than P2 billion — to Romualdez’s mansions in Forbes Park and another residence near Malacañang. Despite this sworn testimony, no freeze order has been issued against Romualdez.

Escudero

Sen. Chiz Escudero — removed as Senate president last Sept. 8 and replaced by Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, who has been clearly allied to Marcos — has not minced words. He rebuked resigned public works secretary Manuel Bonoan for having failed to cut off anomalous contractors and warned that unless the DPWH shows teeth, it risks being seen as an accomplice rather than a victim.

More importantly, Escudero linked the flood-control mess to Romualdez himself:

“Billions of pesos in insertions do not materialize out of thin air. They require the speaker’s consent.”

Indeed, party-list representative Zaldy Co — the “supervisor” of the scam that cost taxpayers at least P100 billion — was a political nobody until Romualdez made him chairman of the powerful House appropriations committee. As chair, Co controlled which projects would pass or fail, coordinating closely with DPWH officials.

A contractor most of his life, Co reportedly told Romualdez how kickbacks could be harvested from DPWH projects — ghost or not — by inserting them after the House had approved its budget version. Thus, Co’s firm Sunwest ended up with P35 billion worth of flood-control projects in Romualdez’s home province of Leyte.

Co is cast as the central operator of the scam, the man who maneuvered insertions and funneled projects to favored contractors. But could one party-list congressman command DPWH officials and other congressmen? The answer is obvious.

Pressured

Escudero’s Senate speech revealed that DPWH district engineers admitted under oath that they were pressured from above to sign off on nonexistent projects. “If the engineers feared their regional directors, and the directors feared the DPWH leadership,” Escudero asked, “then who in the House was everyone afraid of?”

Certainly not Zaldy Co. Ninety-nine percent feared Romualdez — and Marcos. Freeze orders for everyone — except Romualdez.

If AMLC can freeze thousands of accounts based on audit trails and COA reports, why has it not acted on sworn testimony that cash literally reached Romualdez’s doorstep — or on Escudero’s Senate statements that Co could not have acted without Romualdez’s go-signal?

Instead, Dizon has focused on the small fry, hurling curses at them as “animals, not humans.” But he hasn’t uttered a word about Romualdez. Instead, he constantly reminds reporters that his actions are “sa kautusan ng Pangulo,” as if Marcos has been an anti-graft crusader since he became president.

The ICI has not summoned Romualdez. The DOJ has not charged him. The AMLC has not frozen his accounts. Everyone else is fair game: senators, contractors, engineers, party-list reps — even dummies.

By refusing to confront Romualdez, government institutions show not just weakness but complicity. They are ensuring that the flood-control scam becomes the template for future plunder — the next ghost project, the next betrayal of public trust.

AMLC

The AMLC wields vast powers. It simply asks the Court of Appeals to authorize a freeze order on a person’s accounts and assets. The court must decide within 24 hours, without notifying the accused. If granted, the order lasts 20 days and may be extended for six months.

In practice, the court rarely rejects AMLC requests. In fact, it has often overreached. A lawyer’s account in a Visayan city was once frozen because he was allegedly holding a client’s drug money — when, in truth, it was payment for legal services.

In 2012, tycoon Roberto Ongpin’s assets were immediately frozen for five months before the court lifted the order. The late Chief Justice Renato Corona’s deposits were frozen within two days it was asked for and lasted during his impeachment trial. Vice President Jejomar Binay’s bank assets frozen, as well as those of his son and a dozen of his allies, were frozen for years as a result of the graft case against them, which they overcame.

The AMLC has proven it can act swiftly — except in the case of Martin Romualdez. By doing nothing, the Marcos government has given him time to move his money abroad, possibly through Co’s private aircraft.

Tigers

China’s successful anti-corruption drive under Xi Jinping, launched in 2012, offers a striking parallel. Xi declared:

“Tigers are ferocious beasts that make people tremble with fear; flies are pests detested by everyone. We must strike the tigers and swat the flies.” The former referred to low-ranking corrupt officials and businessmen, and the latter to those in ranking Communist Party, government and military posts.

In our case, the flies are the Discayas and corrupt DPWH engineers. The tigers are Romualdez, the unnamed officials of the Office of the Executive Secretary (as alleged by a former DPWH undersecretary), and several senators. The Alpha Tiger, one suspects, is Marcos himself.

But as Xi warned, tigers are ferocious beasts that make people tremble with fear. And here, they clearly have. The ICI, the DOJ, Dizon and the NBI all quake before the tigers — even as the flies are being swatted.

---

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

X: @bobitiglao

Archives: www.rigobertotiglao.com

Book orders: www.rigobertotiglao.com/shop

The post Freeze orders for everyone – except, of course, Romualdez first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.

Freeze orders for everyone – except, of course, Romualdez
Source: Breaking News PH