A week after his arrest on extortion charges, Peanut Gallery Media Network (PGMN) founder Franco Mabanta has broken his silence with a detailed public statement — and a video his camp says is the real reason the National Bureau of Investigation came after him.
Mabanta and four PGMN team members — Finance Officer Ericson James Pacaba, Incorporator John Alexander Vasquez Gomez, and employees Jardine Christian Serrano and Franco Jose Gallardo — were arrested in an NBI entrapment operation on May 5, 2026. The NBI alleged that Mabanta first demanded P350 million from former House Speaker and Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez but later settled for P300 million, threatening to release a five-part exposé video linking the lawmaker to a flood control scandal unless payment was made.
In his statement published on PGMN’s Facebook page, Mabanta directly disputed the NBI’s account of how contact between the two parties began. “PGMN did not even approach Martin Romualdez’ camp. I, Franco Mabanta, did not approach them. They approached me — pretending that they needed help for a company called Marcventures Mining. They proceeded to reach out, not once, but repeatedly. They were the ones who pursued me relentlessly, not the other way around,” he said.
PGMN has maintained that the group spent five months conducting research on alleged corruption by Romualdez during his time as House Speaker. “The episode was filmed several weeks ago. It has been fully edited — it is 90 minutes-long, packed with hard evidence, and ready for release,” Mabanta said in an earlier statement. His latest post indicates the video has now been published, framing it as the trigger for the legal action against him.
“We did not DEMAND money to bury this story. We had no intention of burying it. We have the evidence — the messages, the timeline, the names. We have all of it. It will come out at the proper time and in the proper venue,” he said.
Mabanta also described receiving safety warnings in the days before the arrest. “Days before our arrest, we had been privately warned multiple times by powerful close friends who were aware of the situation that there is legitimate concern for our physical safety in that any or all of us could be hurt or killed by hitmen,” he said. He added that he had pre-authorized his legal team and trusted allies to release the video should anything happen to him or his staff.
The PGMN founder rejected the characterization of his arrest as a law enforcement matter, calling it instead “suppression of press freedom” and accusing Romualdez of orchestrating what he described as a manufactured extortion narrative to prevent publication of the documentary.
His claim was disputed by University of the Philippines journalism professor Danilo Arao, who described Mabanta not as a journalist but as a “political operative” who has publicly claimed credit for the outcomes of political campaigns he worked on.
According to the NBI, the alleged extortion scheme began as far back as last year, with Mabanta purportedly threatening to release the video unless payment was received, and resurfaced two weeks before the arrest when a teaser of the material was allegedly sent to Romualdez’s camp alongside an escalated demand.
Mabanta and his four co-accused were released on May 9 after each posting bail of P120,000, with the release order issued by Pasig Regional Trial Court Branch 167. Their case remains pending. The NBI has since reported receiving a wave of new complaints in the wake of the arrest.
