CRIMINAL and graft complaints have been filed against House Speaker Martin Romualdez and five other House lawmakers over the alleged P241 billion worth of illegal insertions in the 2025 national budget.
Former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, senatorial aspirants Lawyer Jimmy Bondoc and Lawyer Raul Lambino of the PDP-Laban; Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio; and non-government organization Citizens Crime Watch filed 12 counts each of falsification of legislative documents against Romualdez, house majority leader Zamboanga City Second District representative Manuel Jose Dalipe, former House appropriations committee chairperson and Ako Bicol Party-list Representative Zaldy Co, acting appropriations committee chair Marikina Second District Representative Stella Quimbo and two “John Does” before the Office of the Ombudsman.
Former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, senatorial aspirants Lawyer Jimmy Bondoc and Lawyer Raul Lambino of PDP-Laban, Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, and the non-government organization Citizens Crime Watch filed 12 counts each of falsification of legislative documents against Romualdez, House Majority Leader Zamboanga City Second District Representative Manuel Jose Dalipe, former House appropriations committee chairperson and Ako Bicol Party-list Representative Zaldy Co, acting appropriations committee Chair Marikina Second District Representative Stella Quimbo, and two "John Does" before the Office of the Ombudsman.
The respondents were also facing complaints for the violation of Article 170 of the Revised Penal Code and Section 3(e) of Republic Act No. 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
The complainants said that while the ratified Bicameral Conference Committee Report on the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) contained items with corresponding blanks valued at zero pesos, the enrolled GAB, which President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. signed into law in December, suddenly had billions of pesos worth of amounts illegally and without authorization inserted into the appropriations that had blanks in the ratified Bicam Report.
The total amount of insertions discovered is approximately P241 billion.
“Clearly, these amounts were illegally inserted, without authority, because it was done so after the Bicam Report was ratified, and therefore the amounts inserted were not found in the approved Bicam Report and, worse, was not ratified by Congress,” the complainants said.
“The correct thing to have done was to keep the blanks left as blanks, because this is what Congress ratified; but, instead, they did the exact opposite: they illegally inserted amounts worth Php 241B, this is not a correction, this is an unauthorized illegal insertion that violated the Revised Penal Code,” they added.
Marcos earlier labeled such claims, which were first revealed by former President Rodrigo Duterte and Davao City Third District Representative Isidro Ungab, as "lies."
He maintained that there were no discrepancies in the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Quimbo also earlier reiterated that the 2025 GAA is “lawful, valid, and fully enforceable.”
She confirmed that there were blank items in the bicameral report but noted that funding for these items had been identified before the signing of the report. (TPM/SunStar Philippines)