Batangas 1st District Rep. Leandro Leviste said all the senators were listed in the late Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral’s files as having budget insertions linked to flood control projects, including his mother, Sen. Loren Legarda.

In a radio interview Monday, the neophyte congressman said the files allegedly showed that senators accounted for P120 billion in budget insertions during the 2024 bicameral conference committee deliberations on the DPWH’s 2025 budget, averaging P5 billion to P6 billion per senator.

“I can say [my mother’s name was there],” Leviste said in Filipino. “I asked her, and she said she didn’t know of anything listed there, and among the senators the insertions under her name were the smallest.”

Leviste said Legarda’s insertions amounted to about P1 billion, the lowest among all the senators. “Whatever the average was, my mommy’s was lower than that.” 

Cabral, who died under circumstances that are still under investigation, was described by Leviste as the “middleman” for flood control budget insertions and was reportedly in charge of determining the “allocable” amounts assigned to each district.

Leviste earlier claimed on the DAILY TRIBUNE program Straight Talk that Cabral “had more influence on the DPWH budget than the Speaker of the House,” in an interview taped a day before her death.

Handover

On Sunday, Leviste said Cabral on 4 September personally handed over to him files containing a nationwide list of proponents behind DPWH budget insertions, following instructions from then newly appointed DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon.

He said the documents have “wide-ranging consequences,” as they allegedly named not only members of Congress and the Senate, but also executive branch officials, including secretaries and undersecretaries outside the DPWH, as well as private individuals.

“Almost all congressmen and senators had allocations and their own lists of insertions under this budget allocation,” Leviste said, adding that budget insertions had become normalized.

“These insertions ended up functioning as compensation, because even if you’re not actually an expert in flood control, you’re still given the power to choose where the funding for flood control projects will go,” he said.

“So it had almost become normal that if you were a government employee, you had your own flood control insertion,” he added.

List questioned

Leviste’s admission that he possessed the files, however, prompted concern from the Liberal Party, which questioned the authenticity and handling of the documents.

LP president Erin Tañada said Leviste’s claim raised serious questions about how he obtained the files and whether they were legitimate.

“Is he [here] to help us understand who should be held accountable, or is he making our situation more chaotic? These are the questions that have to be answered first,” Tañada said partly in Filipino.

“We don’t want that because of Usec Cabral’s death a lot of information will come out that could disrupt the current investigation,” he added.

Tañada said that only the DPWH could authenticate the documents, warning that its failure to do so could jeopardize the ongoing probes into the alleged large-scale corruption in flood control projects.

‘ICI, Ombudsman viewed files’

Leviste said he showed the files to the Independent Commission for Infrastructure and the Office of the Ombudsman in November but he refused to release them to the public, preferring that the DPWH do so.

He said he would disclose the list only if authorized by Congress.

Cabral resigned weeks after the alleged turnover of the files, amid the congressional investigations into the flood control anomalies. 

Senator Panfilo Lacson earlier tagged Cabral as central to the budget insertion scheme, alleging that she coordinated with lawmakers’ staff on proposed public works projects to be included in the national budget.

The DPWH said it has turned over Cabral’s digital devices and documents in compliance with a subpoena duces tecum issued by the Office of the Ombudsman.