DOJ: Only 14 of 416 flood control projects are ‘ghost’

Out of 416 suspected “ghost” flood control projects across the country from 2016 to 2025, only 14 so far have been identified as truly non-existent, as the majority of these were constructed but situated far from their intended site.

At the resumption of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee’s probe into the flood control scam on Monday, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Undersecretary Arthur Bisnar presented a breakdown of the reported “ghost” flood control projects, some of which were reported through the Sumbong Mo Sa Pangulo website.

Initially, the reported ghost flood control projects totaled 421, but were trimmed down to 416 after verification and cross-checking by the DPWH, which revealed duplicate contracts.

Bisnar’s table showed that 337 of 416 flood control projects were actually built, but more or less 50 meters away from the submitted grid coordinates, or the actual site where the project should be implemented.

These projects were inspected and confirmed ghost by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Department of Economy, Planning and Development (DepDev), which comprised the quality assurance unit teams that were established to help the DPWH fast-track the assessment of the flood control projects.

The majority of the projects (86.35 percent), totaling 291, were found over 50 meters away, while 13.65 percent, or 46 projects, were less than 50 meters away from the declared site.

“That’s what happened in our initial field validation. Out of the supposedly 421 that were trimmed down to 416, this was initially visited and checked by the AFP, PNP, and DepDev,” Bisnar told senators in Filipino.

“Because they didn’t find anything due to the incorrectcoordinates, they reported it as non-existent,” he continued.

Acting Department of Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida, meanwhile, said that out of these projects, 14 were identified as “ghost.”

“Currently, the Department of Justice has identified 14 projects, based on the evidence we have gathered, that we are convinced are ghost projects,” Vida stated, adding that the figures “were pulled from the initial list of 421.”

“Of the remaining projects, we are not yet convinced that they are ghost projects, and we continue to gather evidence to determine whether they are indeed ghost projects,” the Justice official added.

Of the 14 confirmed non-existent anti-flood projects, two were already the subject of criminal cases filed in the Sandiganbayan, according to Vida.

DPWH Undersecretary Ricardo Bernabe III confirmed that the discrepancies between the MYPS (Multi-Year Planning and Scheduling) and Infratrack coordinates contributed to the slow progress of the case filing by the DOJ against the culprits of the flood control scam.

Bonoan denies deliberately submitting wrong data

Former DPWH chief Manuel Bonoan, who returned from the United States to attend the Senate probe after being subpoenaed, denied that he deliberately submitted incorrect grid coordinates to Malacañang in an attempt to mislead the investigation, as alleged by committee chairperson Ping Lacson.

Bonoan said the data he forwarded to President Marcos Jr. was produced by his subordinates, including the late undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral.

Citing “time constraint,” Bonoan admitted that they did not double-check the list of potential ghost flood control projects that they submitted to Marcos in August.

He claimed that they hastily submitted the grid coordinates—which contain records of flood control projects from July 2022 to May 2025—to the President’s office, shortly after he made the marching order during his SONA in July.

“We have very little time to go through all the data. On August 4, 2025, we submitted the list of projects totalling 9,856, but there was one correction, so it’s only 9,855,” Bonoan said.

“Because of the time constraint that we have to submit, I constructed the late undersecretary Cabral to collate the information that we need to the Office of the President,” he added.

Bonoan, however, stated that contrary to the data, his office had also received reports indicating that only the DPWH-Bulacan First District Engineering Office was responsible for having potential ghost flood control projects.

“I went to validate these ghost flood control projects in the Bulacan First District Engineering Office…I found out that there have been ghost projects in the area,” Bonoan averred. “There were no other regions that furnished me or informed me of any other ghost projects at the time.”

Bonoan went on to say that the only cases of possible ghost projects that he “personally reported” to the President were from the Bulacan First District Engineering Office, suggesting that they might be an “isolated case.”

As a result, the erstwhile DPWH chief claimed that Marcos tasked him to investigate the existence of the so-called ghost projects in Bulacan, which Bonoan claimed resulted in the relief of several personnel from the DPWH First District Engineering Office.