Falsification of legislative documents raps were filed against Speaker Martin Romualdez and two other lawmakers before the Ombudsman at the start of this week.
Criminal complaints were filed over the alleged PHP241 billion worth of insertions in the 2025 national budget.
Former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez; senatorial aspirants lawyer Jimmy Bondoc; and lawyers Raul Lambino and Ferdinand Topacio; and non-government organization Citizens Crime Watch served as complainants.
Romualdez, House Majority Leader Manuel Jose “Mannix” Dalipe, former House appropriations committee chairperson and Ako Bicol Party-list Rep. Zaldy Co, and others unnamed were charged at the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office on Monday, February 10 (Manila time).
Alvarez again raised the supposed blank entries in the bicameral conference committee report on the national budget first raised by former president Rodrigo Duterte.
Alvarez said they were all surprised when they saw the bicam report sent to them via e-mail. There were blanks. But it was complete when the President signed it.
Alvarez added: “I am not sure if that could be a typographical or grammatical error. The amount is huge, PHP241 billion.”
For his part, Topacio said ”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, were not ratified by Congress.”
”The correct thing to (do) was to keep the blanks … because this is what Congress ratified but, instead, they did the exact opposite. They illegally inserted amounts worth PHP241 billion. This is not a correction; this is an unauthorized insertion that violated the Revised Penal Code.”
The former speaker said the enrolled bill was never released by the House Secretariat.
Romualdez said he would not comment until he has seen the complaint.
The complainants are known allies of Duterte but they denied that it was part of the ongoing political war with the Marcos camp.
Bondoc said the filing of criminal charges was separate from his running for a Senate seat but he was acting in his capacity as a member of the legal team of the PDP Laban, headed by Duterte.
The filing of criminal cases has nothing to do with politics. It is clear that a crime was committed, according to Alvarez.
President Marcos on December 30 last year signed into law the PHP6.326-trillion national budget for 2025 and vetoed over PHP194 billion worth of line items that were not consistent with his administration’s priorities.
Last month, Duterte and Davao City Representative Isidro Ungab flagged supposed discrepancies in the budget, citing missing budget amounts for items under the Department of Agriculture and unprogrammed appropriations.
Marcos said Duterte was “lying.”
Former executive secretary Vic Rodriguez, Ungab, and others have asked the Supreme Court to declare the 2025 national budget as unconstitutional amid alleged irregularities and supposed blank items in the bicameral conference committee report.
House appropriations panel acting chairperson Stella Quimbo had confirmed that there were blank items in the bicameral report on the PHP6.325 trillion national budget for 2025. But she quickly added that funding for these items had been identified before the signing of the report.
Executive Sec. Lucas Bersamin – a retired Supreme Court chief justice – said the budget was legal with no constitutional infirmities. He added that the Marcos administration would welcome all legal challenges to the approved budget.
