In his recent privilege speech, Senator Panfilo ‘Ping’ Lacson introduced a “corruptionary”—hybrid of the words corruption and dictionary—to define various tactics conspirators have used to drain public funds through anomalous infrastructure projects.
Lacson said the compilation includes terms such as “Distinct,” “Funders,” “Passing Through/Parking Fee,” and “Reseta,” which reflect practices unearthed in his investigation of flood control projects across the country.
He said these schemes diverted at least half of the P1.9 trillion allotted to such projects over the last 15 years.
The term “Distinct” refers to budget items in the General Appropriations Act with identical contract costs, which insiders described as a code to signal project ownership.
Lacson pointed to ghost riverbank protection projects in Bulacan’s first engineering district where several contracts were all priced at P77.199 million.
He said the projects were tied to a syndicate in the district engineering office that borrowed contractors’ licenses to process documents and make ghost projects appear finished.
“Reseta,” the second entry, describes the two to three percent kickback imposed by district engineering offices, likened to a doctor’s prescription that contractors were forced to swallow.
The term “Passing Through” or “Parking Fee” refers to five to six percent of a project’s cost collected by politicians who controlled the districts where projects were carried out.
“Funders,” meanwhile, identifies lawmakers who pushed for projects and pocketed 20 to 25 percent of the total allocation.
Lacson cited an example in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro, where a lawmaker secured P1.1 billion worth of additional flood control projects on top of P810 million in the proposed budget, ballooning the total to P1.9 billion.
He said that beyond statutory deductions like value-added tax and insurance, project funds were further sliced into layers of kickbacks.
These included eight to 10 percent for Department of Public Works and Highways officials, two to three percent for district engineering offices, and five to six percent for bids and awards committees.
He added that other cuts included up to one percent for the Commission on Audit and another five to six percent for politicians charging parking fees.
Funders, he said, claimed the biggest share, pocketing up to a quarter of the project budget.
Lacson said these schemes illustrate how corruption has become systemic, drowning the country in waste and inefficiency.
“The depth of corruption has become so overwhelming that it drowns us in our sad state: More than flood control, what the Filipino people badly need to see is greed control,” he concluded.
