The P75 million donated to Senator Rodante Marcoleta by former Congressman Mike Defensor, traders Joseph Espiritu and Aristotle Viray was intended to fund his 2025 senatorial campaign — not for his personal use.

This was based on notarized deeds of donation obtained by the media and testimony elicited during the bail hearings in the plunder case against the senator and his three donors.

The deeds covering Defensor’s P30-million, Espiritu’s P25-million and Viray’s P20-million donations, executed on 6, 8 and 9 January 2025, respectively, state on their face that the money was given in consideration of the donors’ support for Marcoleta’s possible candidacy in the 12 May 2025 elections.

Field Investigation Bureau Director Maria Melinda Mananghaya-Henson confirmed in court that the three deeds of donation appear to be identical — indicating that Defensor and Espiritu donated on the same terms.

The documentary record belies Marcoleta’s position that the funds were the senator’s “personal” money — the characterization Marcoleta advanced before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to explain why the donations were not disclosed in his Statement of Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE).

Marcoleta himself, in a sworn affidavit, stated that Viray “committed to donate to my campaign funds” should he decide to run for senator, and that the businessman turned over the P20 million “in support of my senatorial candidacy.” The affidavit adds that Viray provided a further P1.2 million to cover the 6-percent donor’s tax, which the senator’s authorized representatives remitted to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

“Mr. Viray did not ask for, and I did not promise, perform, or withhold, any official act in consideration of the donation,” Marcoleta said in the same affidavit, adding that no part of the money came from public funds, government contracts, procurement transactions, franchises or regulatory favors.

The campaign character of the donations was reinforced by the prosecution’s first witness, Atty. Victoria Kadeja Besinio of the Comelec’s Political Finance and Affairs Department (Comelec-PFAD), at the 3 September hearing.

On cross-examination, Besinio admitted that the premise of her recommendation — eventually adopted by the Comelec — to charge the donors with an election offense for non-reporting was precisely that the donations were in the nature of campaign contributions or monies used to fund Marcoleta’s campaign.

Besinio also acknowledged that Comelec Resolution No. 11109 allows a report of contribution to be filed by the candidate or party treasurer on behalf of the contributor.

On clarificatory questioning by the court, she conceded that no election offense may be pursued against Marcoleta in any event, as Republic Act (RA) 7166 has decriminalized violations of Section 109 of the Omnibus Election Code.

To date, the Comelec’s Law Department has taken no action on the recommendation to file cases against the donors.

At the 14 September hearing, Atty. Lawrence Arroyo, counsel for Defensor and Espiritu, drew from Mananghaya-Henson the admission that she was not present when the deed of donation was executed.

He invoked the res inter alios acta rule against the prosecution’s use of a video of Marcoleta, arguing that under Section 29, Rule 130, extrajudicial admissions of an accused cannot bind his co-accused.

Arroyo also objected to portions of the witness’s judicial affidavit as speculative — particularly the theory that Marcoleta could potentially protect or defend his friends and allies.

Mananghaya-Henson agreed that the donation came from private funds.

Besinio, for her part, had earlier confirmed that the donors were never parties to the Comelec-PFAD fact-finding investigation — only Marcoleta was issued a Show Cause Order — and that she learned the donors’ identities only from the tax returns and bank payment slips attached to the senator’s Verified Position Paper, which the donors neither signed nor helped prepare.

The Comelec-PFAD recommended the filing of a complaint against the donors for preliminary investigation without first conducting a fact-finding investigation into them.