MANILA, Philippines — Former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) district engineer Henry Alcantara, now a state witness against former speaker Martin Romualdez in a P7.4-billion plunder case, testified Tuesday that the infrastructure kickback scheme had been in place even before Romualdez assumed the speakership in 2022.
“It is already a system,” Alcantara said, describing a practice he said existed even before he became a district engineer in 2019 when he was still working as a private engineer.
During the bail hearing before the Sandiganbayan Third Division, Alcantara identified former congressman Zaldy Co, who also faces charges in the case, as the person who determined the percentages for the alleged kickbacks. Co allegedly told him that contractors seeking the inclusion of infrastructure projects in the national budget had to pay a 20-percent commitment fee, which later rose to 25 percent without any explanation given to them.
The fees allegedly served as advance payments to secure the inclusion and eventual awarding of government infrastructure projects to contractors. Associate Justice Karl Miranda questioned what assurance contractors had that they would recover the money they paid before receiving the contracts.
Alcantara described the arrangement as a matter of “trust,” acknowledging that contractors took a risk in paying the fees. He also testified that a coordinator communicated with contractors about which companies would receive the projects.
Payments to Co were allegedly made in stages. Alcantara said a partial amount was handed over when projects appeared in the National Expenditure Program, while the full commitment fee was paid once the projects were included in the enacted General Appropriations Act. He said he observed a similar arrangement in his dealings with former DPWH undersecretary Roberto Bernardo.
Contractors allegedly benefited when the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) released the project funds to the DPWH. Alcantara testified that he had not encountered a case in which funding for a project covered by a commitment fee was not released.
Associate Justice Ronald Moreno also asked Alcantara about the origins of the scheme. The witness said commitment fees were already being collected before his appointment as a district engineer in 2019, but could not identify who started the practice.
During cross-examination, Romualdez’s lawyers also established that Alcantara had not implicated or mentioned the former speaker in his previous appearances before legislative inquiries into the flood control controversy.