Islands of excellence: Atong sabong murder warrants and Remulla’s bombshell exposé

The Sandiganbayan issued the warrants charging Ang with multiple murder, obstruction of justice and graft. Prosecutors allege he authorized the cold-blooded murder of at least 12 sabong aficionados between 2021 and 2022, whom his syndicate has accused of rigging e-sabong platforms such as Sabongnet, a front he controlled. E-sabong, legalized in 2020, proved to be a tremendous hit among the masses, and the country’s lower middle class as it gave bettors the excitement of betting in cockfights (rather than merely buying lotto tickets). Not only that, through the wonders of streaming internet channels, they didn’t have to endure going to crowded, noisy cockfight arenas.

E-sabong operated below the elite’s and opinion makers’ radar that Atong Ang, who has been notorious since the regime of ousted president Joseph Estrada, has lorded over this form of gambling, generating billions of pesos in profits, making him a billionaire many times over.

Atong’s alleged crime should actually have outraged us all because of its heinousness. Why would cockfight aficionados — i.e., those who had their cocks fight under e-sabong — be brutally murdered, many strangulated for the killers to save on bullets? Merely because of Atong’s perceived need to make his e-sabong fights credible that bettors would trust that these are not rigged. But should they have been killed? In Atong’s criminal mind as it has been in the mafiosi mind, murdering such people almost instantly sends the message to the bettors’ market that he means deadly business in running a cheating-free operation.

Billionaire

As a reporter these past decades, I have seen Atong disappear in a blaze of criminal allegations, only to emerge again as the most powerful shadowy billionaire, who even crawled into high-society circles by apparently having as a mistress the socialite Gretchen Barreto. Imagine, Gretchen the wife of what was once among the most powerful business tycoons, Antonio “Tonyboy” Cojuangco? Never before have we seen such a bold jump from murderous gangland to high-society circles. Atong has claimed all of the incriminating photos of him and Gretchen were misleading, and that she was merely another investor in his e-sabong enterprise. Gretchen was included among Atong’s gang indicted in the murder conspiracy, but it isn’t clear if she was dropped off the list of those issued arrest warrants.

I never thought I’d see the day Atong would be actually hunted down to face charges, especially with his reputation for being generous in his bribes to police and government officials.

Victims include one “Kuya Ben,” a 45-year-old Bulacan cock breeder shot execution-style in a cockpit itself to be witnessed by bettors, and Mang Tony, a 38-year-old Pampanga aficionado, whose throat was slit following rigging accusations. NBI ballistics and witness testimonies directly implicate Ang’s enforcers. His empire spans Pasay jai-alai parlors to e-sabong servers, with sidelines in POGOs that laundered billions. The warrants triggered a P1.8-billion asset freeze by the Anti-Money Laundering Council on Jan. 12, effectively dismantling his Delta Holdings network.

Hopefully, the victims will further drive the prosecutorial momentum. Kuya Ben’s family and other victims’ relatives testified on Jan. 14, galvanizing public outrage. A Social Weather Stations survey from 2025 showed 80-percent distrust in courts, but #JusticeForSabong trended with 2 million engagements this year. Younger voters ousted 15 dynasts in 2025 local polls, hopefully a portent of a future with few dynasts in power.

I had been disappointed at the Remulla brothers for not moving decisively to prosecute former House speaker Martin Romualdez, fingered by several whistleblowers to have received billions in kickbacks in the flood control ghost projects. How can one ignore the accusations of his very right-hand man, former congressman Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, who actually executed the elaborate scam that started with congressmen’s “insertions” of their projects in the national budget?

But in an interview with a TV reporter the other day, Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla disclosed that unidentified “mutual friends” had offered him and his brother, Ombudsman Boying, P1 billion each to abandon the investigations into the P9 billion in “ghost” flood control projects all over the country. The Department of Public Works and Highways disbursed funds to contractors for nonexistent dikes, with the Commission on Audit flagging 30 percent leakage across P4.5 trillion worth of infrastructure funds.

Not difficult

I don’t find it difficult to believe Remulla’s claim. Romualdez stands accused of pocketing tens of billions of disbursements for nonexistent or substandard projects. Why wouldn’t he just sacrifice a small part of that so he could go scot-free?

But the Remulla brothers are no stranger to a P1-billion wealth, and they can quite easily pooh-pooh the offer. Together with a third brother, Gilbert, they are billionaires themselves inheriting the wealth of their father Crispin, who amassed vast tracts of land in Cavite, many of which were converted to export processing zones, when he was the longest-serving Cavite governor. The Remullas’ most recent land sale was of their 30-hectare Island Cove in 2018 to a group of Chinese-Filipino investors for P7 billion who put up offshore gaming operations there until that industry was shut down by the government last year.

Jonvic making public the offer — which could have been made only by Romualdez — signals his and his brother’s determination to push the flood control prosecutions through to the end.

I am sure the Remulla brothers are aware that they are in a unique position in history to be modern Philippine heroes, this time for breaking the back of Philippine corruption, to make accountability a feature of our society as it has been long ago in Singapore and other countries.

Boying had a quintuple bypass heart surgery in 2023, and was diagnosed with leukemia, although he claims he is now fully recovered and cancer-free. Perhaps Boying has decided to devote his remaining years on Earth to strengthening the country’s law enforcement to First World levels.

Jonvic as the Department of the Interior and Local Government secretary has control of the Philippine National Police, the country’s main law-enforcement agency. Boying heads the Office of the Ombudsman, the executive that the Constitution has designated as the country’s graft fighter.

Vida

But not only that, when he vacated the post to become Ombudsman, Boying got Marcos to appoint to replace him the undersecretary he brought into the department, Frederick Vida, a through-and-through Remulla man who had been vice mayor and then-mayor of Mendez town in Cavite for 15 years before joining his mentor. Through Vida, Remulla has the department’s prosecutors corps under his command, as well as the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and even the graft-ridden Immigration Commission.

The Republic’s primordial task of enforcing the law, even in its bureaucracy, has never been under a single command, as it is now under the Remulla brothers.

The Remullas have immense tasks facing them. First, prosecuting the former House speaker for corruption, the first time an official that high up would be prosecuted and consequently arrested. Second, the Remullas should acquire enough evidence to convince Congress to impeach and remove Marcos Jr. since as president he is immune from criminal suit.

They have just two years and five months to accomplish these herculean tasks, before the Marcos 2 regime steps down from power. It would be so ironic if out of this most corrupt regime ever, our law-and-order institutions emerge stronger than ever before.

If they fail, instead of history applauding them as heroes, they’ll be branded as among Marcos Jr.’s most successful PR crisis managers, having whitewashed him of the gargantuan flood control corruption scandal.

The “islands of excellence” would instead be not just illusory, but reefs that got the ship of state grounded.

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Islands of excellence: Atong sabong murder warrants and Remulla’s bombshell exposé
Source: Breaking News PH