Eighteen Marines, P805 billion and a shameful press
EIGHTEEN Marines and Army soldiers — not opposition politicians, not anonymous social media accounts, not shadowy “sources” — have signed a notarized affidavit claiming they personally transported vast amounts of cash, allegedly totaling P805 billion, to some of the highest officials of the land. They say the deliveries went to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., then-House speaker Martin Romualdez, several senators and numerous members of the House of Representatives.
If these allegations are fabricated, they amount to one of the most reckless acts of perjury in recent political history; however, if only a fraction is true, they represent a political earthquake with aftershocks that will be felt for years to come.
The affidavit is explosive not only for its targets, but also for its timing. The claims surfaced after months of testimony on the massive diversion of public works funds, including flood‑control projects, where contractors and politicians have already been publicly named in sworn statements. The Marines’ narrative — of uniformed men ferrying suitcases of cash — bolsters the pattern of money moving from government infrastructure budgets to our leaders and legislator’ safes.
The core of the affidavit is logistical detail, not political rhetoric. The Marines say that starting in 2022, they were ordered to escort and physically carry luggage they were told contained cash, some loaded at air bases or government facilities, and delivered to residences and offices of top officials. They describe:
– Large, medium and small suitcases, paper bags and envelopes filled with cash.
– Weekly or near‑weekly trips using multiple vehicles, sometimes in convoys.
– Deliveries to locations they identify as Marcos’ and Romualdez’s residences, and other politicians’ addresses.
– Photographs and videos they claim to have taken of the cash and the movements.
Explosive at this time when the International Criminal Court (ICC) has just started hearing the case against former president Rodrigo Duterte is the claim that beginning December 2023, they were assigned to escort individuals later identified to them as ICC personnel. The Marines say pesos were exchanged into United States dollars in Makati before the visitors arrived and that the dollars were handed to ICC staff during meetings in Manila. They also allege repeated deliveries of money to former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, described as covering “ICC‑related expenses.”
These allegations are specific enough to be tested: hotel logs in Makati, CCTV in lobbies, flight manifests, vehicle plate numbers, telecoms metadata, bank foreign‑exchange records. In any functioning system, those would already be under review.
The Marines’ story does not appear in a vacuum. In 2025, the contractors Discaya couple testified that they paid a “standard” 25-percent kickback to secure Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) projects in Quezon City, and that this practice was widespread in flood control contracts. Investigations and media reports estimated that flood control allocations mushroomed to over P500 billion across several years, with billions allegedly routed through favored districts and lawmakers.
Party‑list representative and Romualdez’s deputy Zaldy Co later claimed under oath that around P56 billion in flood control “kickbacks” were delivered to Marcos and Romualdez, even describing instances when he personally brought money to them. Senate hearings and international coverage noted that at least 17 legislators and multiple DPWH officials were implicated by name in sworn statements. The picture that emerged was of public works budgets being treated as reservoirs for filling politicians’ bank accounts, with contractors and local officials functioning as conduits.
Put side by side, the narratives converge: Discaya and Co describe how the money is generated — through padded or misallocated infrastructure projects — while the Marines describe how cash, once assembled, is physically moved to political principals. Whether all these accounts are accurate is precisely what a serious state would now be testing; what cannot be denied is that multiple sworn testimonies now depict the same system from different vantage points.
Shameful
Against this backdrop, mainstream media’s refusal to publish the Marines’ exposé is so shameful. The major broadsheets — particularly the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star, which once branded themselves as guardians of democratic accountability — either buried or ignored the story. Television news largely followed the same pattern: brief mentions, if any, drowned out by more comfortable topics. No hewing or hawing can justify their refusal to report the Marines exposé.
Don’t these print media editors have the common sense to see how nearly impossible it would be for the Duterte camp to get 18 Marines to conspire to concoct a lie that they delivered billions of dirty money to Marcos, his cousin Martin Romualdez and scores of legislators? Why, with the billions of pesos the Marcos regime had at its disposal — and even its power to threaten people physically — it was able to get only a disgraced Navy man (Trillanes) and three other people to lie that Duterte had directed death squads in his war against drugs.
A de facto martial law is in place. Never in the post-EDSA period have the broadsheets refused to publish such explosive news that claims that Marcos and his allies are such thieves who stole billions of pesos from flood control budgets. Social media, however, is saving democracy, and the news of the Marines’ exposé of their affidavit in the original Filipino and in English translations have gone viral.
Few therefore will be mourning the Philippine print media’s demise. Studies and industry reports show double‑digit declines in circulation and advertising revenue for major broadsheets, forcing cost‑cutting, consolidation and, in some cases, a pivot to online‑only operations.
In modern politics, silence is not neutral. When institutions choose not to act, other forces rush in. When newspapers hesitate, social media influencers, partisan vloggers and anonymous channels rush to occupy the vacuum. The public does not read institutional silence as caution; it reads it as servility to the powers-that-be. As worse, as media that has been bought.
We have seen this dynamic repeatedly: from the 2011 Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) corruption scandal exposed by Col. George Rabusa, where “pabaon” systems of multimillion‑peso send‑off money for generals were revealed, to more recent exposés on procurement anomalies that began on YouTube before reaching formal inquiries. In many cases, formal institutions — Congress, the Ombudsman, the mainstream press — initially kept their distance, only moving when public outrage online made inaction more costly than engagement.
Pattern
That pattern now risks repeating on a larger scale. If official bodies and established media collectively ignore the Marines’ affidavit, the narrative will be written by those least constrained by verification standards. Every unanswered question will be filled with speculation. Every delay will be read as evidence of coordination. A state that avoids short‑term turbulence by refusing scrutiny invites a deeper, longer crisis of legitimacy.
There is another dimension that makes these allegations particularly combustible: the role of the Armed Forces. Even if the amounts and destinations are disputed, the mere claim that active or recently retired Marines and soldiers were debased to work as mules for transporting dirty money attacks the institutional integrity of the military.
The Philippines has lived through periods when the military’s entanglement with politics was open and destabilizing — from coups in the late 1980s to the politicization of promotions and procurement.
In both scenarios, the AFP leadership has a direct interest in rapid clarification. A lingering cloud over both the presidency and the armed forces simultaneously weakens civilian authority and military professionalism. Quiet denials and generic appeals to “let the process work” will not suffice when uniformed men are publicly claiming they transported billions in cash.
The questions that need answering are straightforward and procedural, not rhetorical. Among them:
– Will the Marines be summoned to testify under oath before a formal investigative body such as the Senate, the House, or a special panel of the Ombudsman?
– Has Malacañang issued, or will it issue, a detailed rebuttal addressing specific dates, locations and alleged meetings?
– Have the named officials reconciled their public schedules, flight records and travel logs with the alleged delivery timelines?
– Have the Ombudsman, the Anti‑Money Laundering Council or the Commission on Audit initiated any preliminary fact‑finding based on the affidavit and related testimonies from the flood control cases?
Guilt
None of these steps presuppose guilt. On the contrary, they are the minimum necessary to either disprove the allegations credibly or establish enough factual basis to prosecute those responsible — whether they sit in government or in the witness chair. A government confident of its innocence should be the loudest in demanding such scrutiny.
Filipinos have lived through decades of corruption fatigue. They have watched “investigations” begin with high drama and end in quiet burial. They have seen exposés blaze across headlines for a week and then dissolve into technicalities and plea bargains. Over time, this breeds not just anger but something more corrosive: disbelief in the very idea of accountability
My gut feel is that the Marines’ affidavit will be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back. Marcos will end his presidency sooner than he thinks.
A copy of the affidavit in its original Filipino and in an unofficial English translation is posted in the digital version of this column at rigobertotiglao.com. The signed, notarized document is with the Marines’ lawyer, Levito Baligod.
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
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Website: www.rigobertotiglao.com
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Eighteen Marines, P805 billion and a shameful press
Source: Breaking News PH
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