Senator Chiz Escudero and Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez will not be included in the list of key officials to face criminal and administrative charges to be recommended by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee (BRC) over the so-called “Floodgate” scandal, committee chair Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson said Sunday.
Lacson said this was mainly because Escudero and Romualdez, who had served as Senate President and House Speaker, respectively, are not considered “primary actors” in the scheme, citing an alleged lack of corroborative evidence to substantiate claims that they received payoffs from anomalous projects.
“While their names were mentioned, there was no direct indication that they received the money,” Lacson said in a radio interview, translating his remarks from Filipino.
Lacson separately told the DAILY TRIBUNE that the evidence against Escudero — particularly the sworn testimony of former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) undersecretary Roberto Bernardo naming Escudero, along with former senators Bong Revilla and Nancy Binay, as recipients of flood control kickbacks — “would not merit the Department of Justice’s threshold of reasonable certainty of conviction.”
“Anyway, we are continuously evaluating the transcripts of the committee hearings in order to come up with a truly evidence-based and fair recommendation in the yet-to-be-finalized committee report,” Lacson said in a Viber message.
Escudero was accused of receiving P160 million in kickbacks from flood control projects that Bernardo allegedly delivered to the senator’s friend and campaign donor, Maynard Ngu, in the first quarter of 2025.
Missing accuser
In a Senate hearing in September last year, Bernardo alleged that he met with Escudero in July of the same year at a bar in Taguig, where the senator personally thanked him, indicating that he received the commissions.
Lacson emphasized that Bernardo’s testimony alone is insufficient to establish that Escudero committed wrongdoing unless supported by other corroborating evidence.
The same applies to Romualdez’s case, Lacson said, noting that Romualdez’s accuser, Orly Guteza, has not been located since testifying once before the BRC in the same September hearing as Bernardo.
“In the case of former Speaker Romualdez, there was no acknowledgment like that whatsoever,” Lacson said, although he added that the committee considered Guteza’s testimony and included it in the BRC report.
A draft partial report leaked to the media included recommendations to file corruption charges against Senators Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada, and Joel Villanueva, along with several senior DPWH officials.
Lacson clarified, however, that the report contains different categories and that Escudero is not recommended for prosecution but for further investigation, the same as Romualdez.