Two men from the group of 18 self-described former Marines told a Senate hearing convened by the Cayetano-led bloc that they personally brought suitcases stuffed with cash to Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Senator Erwin Tulfo.
The accusation, aired during Thursday’s session, pulls both senators directly into the testimony of the witnesses who have claimed responsibility for ferrying billions of pesos in flood control kickbacks to officials across government.
Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, addressing the weight of what the panel was hearing, pointed to the history between the chamber’s leaders. “Mabigat sa atin ‘to, dahil pinaniwalaan natin yung blue ribbon committee na pinamunuan ni Sen. Lacson, but everyone knows mag-partner talaga ‘yan, si Sen. Tito Sotto at Sen. Lacson,” he said.
The two witnesses are part of the same set of accusers who, in a joint affidavit earlier this year, said they moved roughly P805 billion in payoffs between 2022 and 2025, sorting the cash into suitcases of varying sizes — the largest said to carry as much as P70 million each. Their list of supposed recipients has reached the President, his family, former House Speaker Martin Romualdez, and fugitive ex-appropriations chief Elizaldy Co.
Sotto has previously rejected any link to the scheme, brushing off an earlier claim that he took receipt of five large suitcases in Baclaran and pointing to gaps in the timeline of the accusations against him.
The witnesses and their lawyer, Levito Baligod, are themselves under legal pressure, facing perjury and cyber libel complaints from officials they have named. Baligod has maintained that his clients are speaking from firsthand involvement rather than secondhand knowledge.
Their appearance came amid a deepening split in the Senate, with the Cayetano camp insisting on its authority to run the proceedings even as a rival bloc has moved to install its own committee leadership and reset the inquiry.
