Presumption of irregularity

According to former public works undersecretary Roberto Bernardo, he received a total of P120 million from Zaldy Co from 2023 to 2025.

This was balato – his goodwill share in the crooked kalakaran in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Bernardo told the Sandiganbayan this week: P45 million in 2023, P50 million in 2024 and P25 million in 2025.

By his reckoning, the amounts constituted only one percent of the kickbacks that Co, as chair at the time of the House committee on appropriations, allegedly received.

The kickbacks, as Bernardo and several others have told congressional probes, typically amounted to 25 percent of the project cost.

Zaldy Co apparently knows the value of sharing. Of that 25 percent, we have yet to find out how much went to his political patrons led by Martin Romualdez, who has claimed that although he was the House speaker at the time, he had not hand-picked Co to chair the appropriations panel.

We’re talking billions of pesos here (trillions over the years). For us hoi polloi, who automatically give to the government a substantial chunk of our hard-earned pay (on top of value-added tax on nearly every basic need from fuel to food and medicine), it’s hard to wrap our heads around the schemes that allowed such colossal amounts to be looted.

In certain countries, angry crowds would have strung up the thieves for a public stoning or execution, or burned down the DPWH and Congress. In our case, maybe we believe too much in the Beatitude that the meek shall inherit the Earth. The looters, unfortunately, are inheriting the National Treasury.

Surely Pinoys haven’t lost the sense of outrage. But perhaps after seeing the country move from Ferdinand Marcos Senior to Junior (and now seeing the outcome), some have come to believe that expressing anger is futile against shameless thieves.

Our nation will collapse, however, if we accept thievery as the norm and stop trying to change the rotten “standard practice” or kalakaran.

With the recent developments, we’re seeing that a dose of suspicion is healthy when dealing with the government. Regularity can no longer be presumed in governance. Instead today we have to presume irregularity in every aspect and level of government, subjecting everything to minute scrutiny.

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As consistently shown in all surveys, the DPWH has long competed with the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs as the most corrupt government agency.

But from recent developments, it looks like the systematic looting linked to the DPWH reached gargantuan proportions when the UniTeam won power by a landslide. The only other regime that comes close to the rapaciousness is the first Marcos regime.

At this point, Bongbong Marcos can correctly point out that he was the one who launched the crackdown on anomalous public works projects.

He can still maintain no involvement in the scandal, even if he has been the final signatory to all the crooked General Appropriations Acts passed since 2022, which institutionalized looting of public funds.

Exhibit A of his commitment to a clean-up is the arrest (and so far, detention without bail) of his once favorite cousin Martin.

I’m guessing though that BBM and his son, Ilocos Norte Rep. Sandro, will also be implicated in the mess once they are no longer in power.

In October 2022, BBM took off for the F1 Grand Prix in Singapore on a Gulfstream G280 jet of the Philippine Air Force. Malacañang said the trip was “productive” and “virtually risk-free.”

An investigative report by Project Brazen alleged that during that Grand Prix, BBM, Sandro and Martin were seated at a VIP table under the name of controversial Malaysian businessman Jaya Sudhir Jayaram, whose shell company in Singapore was linked to a Philippine company owned by Romualdez.

All of them were linked by the Whale Hunting report to an elaborate money laundering scheme allegedly stretching all the way to Spain and the US. The details in the report appear to be similar to the money laundering and plunder cases against Romualdez and his cronies.

If the story is true, it could be another reason why no amount of criticism can stand between BBM and Formula One.

Singapore officials, who take pride in having a squeaky-clean government, may want to check out that story and keep alleged money launderers at arms’ length.

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Meanwhile, details about the assets and financial interests of BBM’s estranged UniTeam running mate, if true, are impressive in their ingenuity.

Who knew even bank manager’s checks could be used to elude accountability watchdogs? Floating unexplained funds in manager’s checks so these need not be included in asset declarations, and then putting them back in bank accounts, we’re told, even has a local term: tinikling.

That Senate session on the use of manager’s checks for asset tinikling surely gave crooks ideas on yet another creative way of parking unexplained wealth. Bank regulators should close that loophole ASAP before crooks begin following the leader.

Forfeiture of dirty money should also be brutally sweeping and efficient, to ensure that the families of thieves won’t benefit in any way from ill-gotten wealth.

Sure, the sins of the parents must not be visited on the children, even if kids are often used as dummy owners of illegal assets.

But if crooks see that they can hold on to a large chunk of their loot even if they are caught and convicted, it’s likely that a number of them will be willing to rot in prison so their children can live in the lap of luxury.

The state must show that crime does not pay.

We must return to the days when presumption of regularity is the norm in government.