Why the rich still steal: The mind of the corrupt

THE most baffling question raised by the plunder case against former House speaker Martin Romualdez is also the simplest: Why? Why would a man born into wealth, already possessing access to practically everything money can buy, risk his name, liberty and fortune for billions more?

Even before he allegedly stole from the government’s flood-control funds starting in 2023, Romualdez’s wealth was hard to fathom: his favorite car a Bentley Continental worth at least P25 million, driven by himself and escorted by a security squad in two black Land Cruisers; a 4,000 square meter mansion on McKinley Road plus two more houses for “work,” one across Malacañang Palace, so he could reach his cousin’s office within five minutes when called. The Ombudsman’s complaint alleges that he also bought two more Forbes Park houses and high-value properties in Leyte and Spain, using funds hijacked from the flood-control project.

Long before becoming speaker, Romualdez moved in a family business empire far larger than the P477 million he personally declared in 2008, including enormous blocks of Benguet Corp. shares; Benguet alone carries more than P5 billion in land and properties across four provinces, plus stakes in 13 other companies. I estimate his true net worth at P4 billion, even before the alleged flood-control theft.

Why do the already rich and powerful turn corrupt? The usual answer, greed, is true but inadequate. The best research suggests grand corruption comes from a mix of power, opportunity, entitlement, rationalization, normalization and, crucially, impunity.

At some point money stops meaning what it means to ordinary people. For someone struggling to pay rent, another P10,000 has obvious use. For a man worth a billion pesos another billion cannot improve his breakfast, his bed or his car. Consumption has limits; status does not. The next billion can mean having more than a rival — it can finance allies, elections, influence and patronage. Money stops being a means of consumption and becomes a scoreboard of power.

A study in the Public Administration Review by Kristina Weißmüller and Anna Zuber, reviewing 93 studies on public-sector corruption, found it cannot be explained by greed alone. People construct moral justifications in various ways in order to convince themselves their corruption is legitimate or at least excusable. The corrupt official does not see himself as corrupt. Blake Ashforth and Vikas Anand made a similar point in their 2003 study, “The Normalization of Corruption in Organizations,” identifying three reinforcing processes: institutionalization, where an exceptional act becomes routine; rationalization, where participants invent self-serving explanations; and socialization, where newcomers learn this is simply how business is done. Congress would be the perfect illustration of this.

Framework

That framework explains something Filipinos already sense. A political machine never has to issue a memo saying, “We steal 20 percent.” Contractors learn whom to approach; language cleanses the act. In Sandiganbayan and Senate testimony on the flood-control scandal, former Public Works and Highways undersecretary Roberto Bernardo and other witnesses described contractors paying “commitments” of roughly 10 to 25 percent of a project’s cost — not “kickbacks,” just “commitments.” Bernardo testified he received P130 million in “balato,” or tip, from Zaldy Co between 2023 and 2025. A common term for bribes here is “SOP,” standard operating procedure — language that makes an illegal act sound routine

This matters because most people need to preserve a favorable self-image. They are not thieves, just collectors of “commitments” or “SOP.” The corrupt politician still regards himself as a good father, loyal friend and patriotic public servant, telling himself: everybody does it; elections are expensive; I have to take care of my people. These are not excuses invented only after getting caught; they become the mental machinery that makes repeated corruption possible.

Grand corruption also has one advantage over ordinary theft: its victims are invisible. A handbag snatcher sees the person he robbed; an official who diverts hundreds of millions sees spreadsheets, not the child wading through floodwaters because a drainage project was never built. That distance makes moral disengagement easier — public money becomes nobody’s money.

Power compounds the effect. Not every powerful person turns corrupt — character and institutions matter — but experiments show power eases self-interested behavior when the holder has wide discretion over others. Political power is especially dangerous because it changes the perceived probability of punishment: the ordinary thief knows the policeman, prosecutor and judge are outside his control, while a political boss may believe they owe him their appointments or have reason to stay silent. After enough successful transactions, the calculation changes: the first P10 million is frightening, then nothing happens; the next P50 million is easier; soon P500 million no longer seems reckless.

The thought is not “I want more” but “I can do this.” I hesitate to call grand corruption an addiction, tempting but imprecise. Better: a player who discovers nobody is enforcing the rules. Every successful violation teaches him the boundary can be pushed farther, until violation becomes normal and obedience irrational. Romualdez may well have reasoned like Louis XIV: “L’État, c’est moi” — “The state, it is I.” Or slightly revised to include his cousin, the president: “L’État, c’est nous: We can raise corruption to an unprecedented scale.”

Winners

An experiment by Amos Schurr and Ilana Ritov, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found competition winners behaved more dishonestly afterward than losers in an unrelated task, an effect linked to entitlement that appeared only when winning meant outperforming someone else. The mechanism is suggestive: repeated victory can produce entitlement — I won, therefore I deserve more. Magnify that by political dynasty, wealth, deferential subordinates and control over public appropriations, and the danger is a worldview in which privilege feels natural and restrictions feel unreasonable.

Martin’s father, Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez, Imelda’s brother and one of the dictator Marcos’ top advisers, was himself charged with ill-gotten wealth; he never went to jail, and after four decades the charges were dismissed for “inordinate delay.” Enormous wealth does not extinguish the desire for more because the comparison changes: the rich man measures himself against other rich men, not the minimum-wage worker. Romualdez gave $7 million to Cornell and Harvard, per the Ombudsman’s complaint, and his Bentley is a modest property, next to the two private jets, three helicopters and three yachts that Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla says he owns — holdings that, ironically, made him such a flight risk he was barred from seeking “medical assistance” abroad weeks before his arrest.

Political corruption also creates a vicious circle: Illicit wealth finances allies and campaigns, which strengthen political power, which brings greater access to budgets and contracts. The objective is no longer personal luxury but accumulation, survival, dominance. Politicians justify this as necessary to fund constituents’ demands, from basketball uniforms to medical bills; any mayor’s, governor’s or congressman’s residence is crowded with people waiting to ask for something. One congressman once asked me, rhetorically, “Where would I get the money for this, from my salary?”

Variable

The central variable is impunity. If someone believes taking P100 million carries a real probability of prison, confiscation and disgrace, even a greedy person has reason to stop. If experience teaches him nobody important is ever punished, the calculation reverses.

Corruption cannot be defeated primarily by moral exhortation; sermons about honesty are powerless against a system that rewards dishonesty. Nor can the treasury be protected by electing rich men on the theory that they have no reason to steal — that assumes corruption is driven by need, and grand corruption frequently is not. At its highest levels, money is power, status and the ability to command loyalty. Once corruption has been institutionalized, rationalized and normalized, the perpetrator may no longer experience himself as committing a crime, merely as taking what the system has taught him he is entitled to take.

The question in the mind of the corrupt is not “Do I need another billion” but “Why shouldn’t I take it if I can?” The cure is not persuading powerful men they already have enough. It is destroying the assumption that they can steal safely — changing the calculation from “How much can I get?” to “What will happen to me if I try?” Perhaps only the risk of losing his life by lethal injection will end corruption in this country. Sad, but is the life of one man equal to the many who die because of the consequences of corruption?

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Why the rich still steal: The mind of the corrupt
Source: Breaking News PH