Four days after former House Speaker Martin Romualdez pleaded not guilty to a ₱7.44-billion plunder charge over the flood-control kickback scandal, his legal camp offered its first detailed public defense on Sept. 20: he "only did his part to get the budget approved" and "has no control over individual projects," according to his counsel, Atty. Jose Roy III, as quoted by The Philippine Star.
Roy's argument, as reported by Star correspondent Daphne Galvez, is structural rather than factual: the alleged kickback scheme, he said, operated "on a per-project basis," with "each district" having "its own favored contracts" — making it implausible, in his telling, for any single official to have masterminded the scheme across the country's congressional districts.
What the statement does not do, based on the reporting available, is address the specific allegations at the center of the Sandiganbayan case against Romualdez: what he is accused of receiving, when, and from whom. Roy's remarks defend Romualdez against the broader "mastermind" framing attached to him in public discussion of the scandal, but they leave untouched the narrower and more consequential question a plunder charge actually turns on — whether Romualdez personally amassed ill-gotten wealth through the scheme, and how much.
The timing matters. Romualdez was arraigned by videoconference on Sept. 16 and pleaded not guilty to the plunder charge, hours after which the Sandiganbayan opened a second front: a preventive suspension case that could cost him his Leyte congressional seat. He was given 10 days from that filing — a deadline that falls around Sept. 26 — to explain why he should not be suspended, as Pulpulitiko has reported. His transfer to the Quezon City Jail, days after his arrest, was accompanied by a Sandiganbayan-vetted medical finding describing him as "clinically stable" for detention.
Roy's statement, then, lands in the narrow window between arraignment and the suspension deadline — a period in which Romualdez's team has every incentive to shape public perception of the case before the court rules on whether he keeps his seat. Framing the scandal as too decentralized for one mastermind is a defense that, if it holds up, would complicate prosecutors' theory of the case without requiring Romualdez to account for any specific transaction.
Neither Romualdez nor Roy addressed, in the reporting reviewed, whether the former Speaker's office exercised influence over which districts or contractors received priority in budget releases — a question that goes to the heart of how "per-project" corruption could still trace back to whoever controlled the purse strings at the top. Pulpulitiko could not independently verify additional detail on the statement, including the exact venue it was delivered in, as this was not specified in available reporting.
Context
Romualdez is one of the highest-ranking officials charged in the flood-control kickback scandal that has consumed Philippine politics since 2025, alongside contractors, lawmakers and Department of Public Works and Highways officials named in Ombudsman and Independent Commission for Infrastructure probes. The Ombudsman has said 35 flood-control corruption cases are now before the courts, with 166 more under investigation, as Pulpulitiko has reported.
Sources
- "Romualdez camp: Ex-speaker not a corruption mastermind" — The Philippine Star, Daphne Galvez, Sept. 20, 2026