Former Partylist Representative Zaldy Co was charged with malversation and graft at the Sandiganbayan on Friday over alleged kickbacks from a P77 million anomalous flood control project in Balagtas, Bulacan.

In a statement after the filing, the Office of the Ombudsman said that the complaint also included multiple officials from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Bulacan 1st District Engineering Office.

Some of the individuals named in the fresh charges were personalities in the case against former Senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla, namely Brice Ericson Hernandez, Arjay Domasig, Jaypee Mendoza, Juanito Mendoza and Christina Mae Pineda.

Members of the Co’s staff, John Paul Estrada and Mark Tecsay, were also implicated as co-conspirators.

WPP for Alcantara

Notably, despite being found to have been involved in the issue, former District Engineer Henry Alcantara’s name was not included in the filing due to his status as a state witness under the Department of Justice’s Witness Protection Program.

The subject project was a riverbank protection structure meant to be situated along the Balagtas River in Purok 4, Barangay San Juan, Balagtas, Bulacan.

The contract for the project was awarded to SYMS Construction Trading, the contractor that was also cited in the Revilla malversation and graft cases.

Similar to the project in Pandi, state investigators also found that the Balagtas riverbank project was supposedly a ghost project.