Sen. Rodante Marcoleta is pushing back against the plunder and indirect bribery case filed against him at the Office of the Ombudsman, arguing in a sworn rebuttal that prosecutors have failed to make their case stick. The senator’s counter-affidavit, reaching the Ombudsman on June 5 but released to reporters only days later, frames the entire complaint as falling short of what the law requires.
At the heart of his defense is the claim that the P75 million he received never qualified as ill-gotten wealth. The money came from former Rep. Mike Defensor along with two private donors, Joseph Espiritu and Aristotle Viray — none of it public money, according to Marcoleta, even though state prosecutors argue the total cleared the P50-million line that triggers plunder under Republic Act 7080.
Marcoleta’s filing leans heavily on the statutory definition. “There is no question that the allegations in the Complaint-Affidavit do not constitute that I amassed, accumulated, or acquired ill-gotten wealth within the contemplation of the Plunder Law,” his counter-affidavit stated. It went on: “The allegations fail to constitute ‘ill-gotten wealth’ within the contemplation of RA 7080 because the alleged acts do not bear the character of a systematic and economically destructive corruption that the Plunder Law was enacted to punish.”
The senator also disputes the disclosure-related accusations. Prosecutors flagged that the P75 million appeared nowhere in his statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth as of June 30, 2025, where he reported P39.6 million accumulated between 1992 and that date. A separate December 2025 SALN, they noted, listed only P16.7 million in cash and savings. Marcoleta’s answer is that the funds were gone by the time he prepared those documents. “The donations were likewise not reflected in my Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) because, by the time the SALNs were prepared and executed, the amounts had already been used for their intended election-related purposes and were no longer assets held by me,” he said.
On the campaign-finance side, the senator contends the donations landed before the official campaign window opened. The 2025 race formally began Feb. 11 — roughly a month after the money changed hands — which he says is why the sum never appeared in the statement of contributions and expenditures submitted to the Commission on Elections. His filing points to a 2009 Supreme Court ruling holding that a candidate incurs liability for election offenses only once the campaign period has started.
Marcoleta argues that neither the SALN nor the SOCE issues supply what he calls the “essential statutory nexus” needed to anchor plunder and bribery charges. His counter-affidavit goes further, suggesting the case carries an ulterior motive — that it “appears to be calculated or orchestrated in such a way as to distract public attention from, or to undermine, the legislative scrutiny and examination of failures in governance, the situation becomes even more complex.”
For now, the courts have moved to keep the respondents within reach. Acting on the Ombudsman’s petition, the Sandiganbayan issued a precautionary hold departure order covering Marcoleta, Defensor, Espiritu, and Viray. Such an order instructs the Bureau of Immigration to bar a person suspected of a crime carrying a minimum penalty of at least six years and one day from leaving the country, and it rests purely on a finding of strong flight risk rather than any determination of guilt.
