Restitution for Bonoan
At the onset of investigations into the trillion-peso flood control scam last year, it was hard to believe that the brazen funneling of public funds to corrupt government officials happened right under then Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan’s nose.
Bonoan’s initial denials painted him as an incredibly clueless head of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the agency at the epicenter of the unprecedented corruption exposed by President Marcos in his State of the Nation Address in July 2025.
Until his underling, then DPWH Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo, testified at the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing last November. According to Bernardo, the late DPWH Undersecretary Maria Catalina “Cathy” Cabral would apportion the budget ceiling for the DPWH’s annual allocable funds under the National Expenditure Program and reserve a substantial part for her and Bonoan’s preferred projects.
Bonoan would get as much as 15 percent of the total amount for his preferred projects as a “commitment” or kickback, the same scheme but with bigger kickbacks for lawmakers who turned the annual billion-peso flood control funds into their personal coffers.
P5 billion every year
Bernardo said Bonoan would ask him to take charge of his reserved allocations, which, for 2023 to 2025, amounted to at least P5 billion every year, with an average commitment of 15 percent.
“Of this 15 percent average commitment, Sec. Bonoan [75 percent] usually would give me 25 percent of the commitment, with the rest of the commitment shared between him and Usec. Cabral,” Bernardo said in his supplemental affidavit to the Senate blue ribbon panel.
As more witnesses spilled details of the grand theft of infrastructure funds, Bonoan’s façade of noncomplicity completely crumbled. On April 23, at a Sandiganbayan bail hearing for former Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., Bernardo’s former driver and aide, Vergel Niño Garcia, testified that his boss asked him to deliver boxes to senators, DPWH officials, including Cabral and Bonoan, and other personalities.
Finally, on May 28, the Ombudsman filed the much-awaited plunder charges against Sen. Jinggoy Estrada for allegedly receiving P573 million in kickbacks from illegal budget insertions in the 2025 national budget. Bonoan was named as Estrada’s co-accused, along with former DPWH National Capital Region assistant district engineer Denryl Caesar Cortuna, and former district engineers Manny Bulusan and Arturo Gonzales Jr.
‘Institutional knowledge’
They were allegedly part of an “intricate mechanism involving illegal budgetary insertions and project allocations” within the DPWH infrastructure portfolio for 2025, with kickbacks “systematically delivered” to Estrada.
And then, a golden opportunity suddenly opened up for Bonoan—to become a state witness for the government’s prosecution of top officials allegedly involved in the flood control scandal.
“We already have signed an agreement for the cooperation of former Secretary Manuel Bonoan to be a state witness,” Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla said at a press briefing last week. Consequently, state prosecutors filed a motion to discharge the plunder case against Bonoan before the Sandiganbayan’s fifth division.
Remulla said Bonoan’s “institutional knowledge” of the flood control scheme would enable the government to pin down big personalities involved in the scam. “We will be benefiting from his testimony with regard to so many of the cases that we are filing,” Remulla said.
Smoking gun
At the rate the government’s prosecution of the flood control scam is going on, with only Revilla and Estrada being the big personalities charged so far, Bonoan certainly appears to have the potential to boost the efforts to go after the masterminds in the case. This comes after government efforts to extradite former congressman Zaldy Co, the fugitive former chair of the House appropriations committee who earlier claimed to have delivered billions of pesos to the President and former Speaker Martin Romualdez, have fallen short.
But while banking on Bonoan as a star witness, the government must not allow him to just get off lightly. The Ombudsman must heed the call of several lawmakers to disclose the terms of the agreement with Bonoan, to ascertain that the government will not get the short end of the bargain. At this point, Bonoan has not provided evidence that could amount to a smoking gun against the big perpetrators.
As well, four other state witnesses returned a total of P316.3 million of their loot to the government, in addition to providing pieces of evidence, prior to being admitted as government witnesses. They have demonstrated their remorse in cash—not just in words.
Similarly, Bonoan must be asked to do the same act of restitution before he is allowed to escape criminal prosecution. Anything less will be unjust and unfair to the public already robbed of taxpayer-funded projects that could have saved many lives.
