Philippine police will arrest 18 suspects in a major corruption scandal, president says

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine police will arrest 18 suspects in a corruption scandal involving flood control projects that has sparked huge protests and forced implicated congressional leaders to step down, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced Friday.

Marcos has been scrambling to quell public outrage over the massive corruption, which has been blamed for substandard, defective or non-existent flood control projects in a poverty-stricken country, long prone to deadly typhoons, floodings and extreme weather in tropical Asia.

The president said the arrests were only the beginning.

The warrants were issued by the Sandiganbayan, a special anti-corruption court, against former lawmaker Zaldy Co, who has resigned from the House of Representatives and fled to an unspecified country, and 17 others, including government engineers and executives of Sunwest Corp., a constructions firm, over irregularities in a flood control project in Oriental Mindoro province.

Government prosecutors have recommended no bail for the suspects because of the scope of the irregularities in the river dike project, worth 289 million pesos ($4.8 million).

“They will be arrested, presented to the court and made to answer to the law,” Marcos said in a video message where he thanked the public for its patience. “There will be no special treatment, and nobody would be spared.”

Last week, Marcos said many of at least 37 powerful senators, members of Congress and wealthy construction executives implicated in the corruption scandal would be in jail by Christmas.

Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla, a key prosecutor in charge of fighting government corruption, told The Associated Press that at least five former and incumbent senators were under investigation for allegedly pocketing huge kickbacks in the faulty flood control projects. Among them is former Senate President Chiz Escudero, who has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Those implicated include lawmakers opposed to and allied with Marcos, including Rep. Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin and key ally, who has denied any involvement but has stepped down as House of Representatives speaker. Sen. Bong Go, a key ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte, has also come under suspicion but has denied any wrongdoing.

Duterte was arrested in March and detained by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands for alleged crimes against humanity over his deadly anti-drugs crackdowns.

He is a harsh critic of Marcos and father of the incumbent vice president, Sara Duterte, who has said that the president should also be held accountable and jailed for signing into law the 2025 national budget that carried appropriations for irregular infrastructure projects.

Aides have defended Marcos from allegations linking him to the irregularities, saying that he first raised alarm over them in July in his annual state of the nation address before Congress.

Some 9,855 flood control projects worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9 billion) that were supposed to have been undertaken since Marcos took office in mid-2022 are under investigation. In September, Finance Secretary Ralph Recto told legislators that up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2 billion) for flood control projects may have been lost to corruption since 2023.