Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla on Monday said former House Speaker Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez and former Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero will soon face a plunder case linked to the preparation of the national budget and alleged irregularities in flood control projects.
Remulla said the case is expected to be formally filed in May.
Plunder is punishable by life imprisonment, forfeiture of the ill-gotten wealth, and a perpetual ban from public office if an accused is found to have amassed at least P50 million through a series of corrupt acts.
Because it carries the sentence of reclusion perpetua (life in prison), bail is not a matter of right and may be denied if the evidence of guilt is strong. Judges must first hold a bail hearing, and if the prosecution’s evidence is deemed strong, the accused will remain in jail while the case is tried.
“We have been seriously preparing a plunder case against former Speaker Martin Romualdez and former Senate President Chiz Escudero. We are building several cases against them,” Remulla said.
According to the Ombudsman, the case centers on elements of conspiracy in the budget’s preparation and is “flood control related in so many ways.”
Remulla said it involves how the budget was passed by the two Houses of Congress and the implementation of projects that allegedly facilitated kickbacks to officials.
“It’s actually the way the budget was passed by the two Houses, and how many things ended up being implemented because of it,” he said.
He said the background of the case has already been laid out in testimonies during the Senate hearings on the flood control corruption controversy.
“If you think about it, there was a conspiracy to commit plunder. I think we can put everything together,” Remulla said.
The Senate hearings revealed that certain flood control projects were allegedly inserted into the national budget and became sources of kickbacks distributed to various government officials.
Remulla also indicated that Romualdez and Escudero may not be the only lawmakers to face charges. Other members of both the House and the Senate, as well as executive branch officials, could also be implicated.
“There are still many other members of both Houses who could also be hit with the plunder cases we are preparing,” he said.
The investigation reportedly covers the General Appropriations Acts for 2024 and 2025, but may also examine actions going back to the time of former Speaker Lord Allan Velasco, who served from October 2020 to June 2022 during the final years of the Duterte administration.
“We will likely go back even further to study the cases that should be filed against those who committed plunder and drained our public coffers,” Remulla said.
Ombudsman reports gains
Meanwhile, the Office of the Ombudsman reported notable improvements in case handling by the end of 2025, citing faster fact-finding investigations and increased filing of criminal and administrative cases.
Remulla, who took office in October 2025, credited the gains to efforts to streamline proceedings and curb the longstanding practice of “parking” cases.
As of 31 December 2025, the anti-graft body completed 1,129 of 2,051 fact-finding investigations (55.05 percent). Of these, 317 led to criminal or administrative cases (28.08 percent), marking a clear improvement over 2024, when 795 of 1,632 investigations (48.71 percent) resulted in 171 cases (21.51 percent). Previous years saw even lower filing rates of 19–20 percent.
For criminal and forfeiture cases, the Ombudsman resolved 1,532 of 3,289 cases in 2025 (46.31 percent). While higher in absolute numbers than 2024’s 990 of 1,932 cases, the completion rate was slightly lower than the previous year’s 51.24 percent.