Bonoan as state witness can help pin down Romualdez, says assistant Ombudsman

MANILA, Philippines – The state has turned former public works secretary Manuel Bonoan into its witness in the flood control corruption probe to pin down ex-House speaker Martin Romualdez. 

The Office of the Ombudsman said on Tuesday, June 30, that it was banking on the insider information that it could get from Bonoan, who himself had faced plunder and graft charges for allegedly receiving kickbacks from projects funded by illegal budget insertions. 

The Ombudsman filed the cases against Bonoan with the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan only last May 28. 

On Tuesday, however, Assistant Ombudsman Mico Clavano said Bonoan could shed light on how lawmakers inserted allocations in the national budget through the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for favored projects and contractors.

Romualdez was Speaker at the time. 

“The case against former Speaker Martin Romualdez is getting stronger by the day, and the reason why we accepted former DPWH Sec. Manny Bonoan as a state witness is precisely because his intention to cooperate with us is for that case specifically,” he Clavano said. 

He said it was Bonoan who approached investigators and offered to tell what he knows about the multi-billion-peso corruption. 

“He sent a letter addressed to the Ombudsman about three weeks ago, expressing his intention to cooperate with the office. We asked him to specify where and how he can help and he said he can explain and describe what he saw and heard about the corruption in Congress. He was there. It was the budget of his department that got messed up. He knows how the scam started and the people behind it,” Clavano said.

The assistant ombudsman acknowledged that it was a “hard decision” to agree to drop Bonoan as defendant, but their office considered how valuable he could be as a resource in the ongoing investigations of bigger targets. 

“Corruption is done in secret so it is always tough to penetrate the conspiracy from the outside. It is rare to find an insider who can walk us through how the thing was planned from the start. Sec Bonoan is in a unique position because he was head of the DPWH and it was the agency’s budget that was used here. It means has personal knowledge,” Clavano said.  

In a privilege speech on September 15, 2025, Senator Panfilo Lacson revealed that, when Bonoan was DPWH secretary, the agency awarded P2.5 billion worth of projects to his daughter’s business partner. 

In accepting Bonoan as state witness, Clavano said: “We factored in his age, illnesses, and all of that. Even if we get him convicted and sentenced to 40 years, do you see him surviving in prison until he is 120 years old?”

On June 1, immediately after he surrendered to authorities, Bonoan was hospitalized for hypertension. 

The Sandiganbayan has since placed him under hospital arrest. 

“We are trying to exact accountability on one of the biggest heists on our budget, we would rather go for the bigger case than have him rot in jail for how many years. He was physically present in that room, right at that moment talking to the congressmen and the other Cabinet secretaries and that was a unique position that he was in. If he is willing to cooperate, we are also willing to hear what he has to say,” the assistant ombudsman said. – Rappler.com