Businessmen Aristotle Viray and Joseph Espiritu now face a non-bailable plunder charge alongside Sen. Rodante Marcoleta and former lawmaker Mike Defensor, after Ombudsman representatives lodged the complaint with the Sandiganbayan on Friday at roughly 10:20 a.m.
At the center of the prosecution is P75 million that Marcoleta, while serving as a congressman, allegedly took as campaign money and left out of his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. The complaint breaks the sum into three separate transfers: P30 million traced to Defensor, P25 million to Espiritu, and P20 million to Viray.
The Anti-Plunder Act sets P50 million as the point at which ill-gotten wealth can trigger liability for a public official. Assistant Ombudsman Mico Clavano has said that privately sourced money can amount to plunder when a public official accepts it under conditions the law forbids.
Marcoleta has laid out several defenses. He maintains the money came from private individuals rather than from public coffers, and that the donor’s taxes tied to the gifts were settled and recognized by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He has also pointed to the timing, arguing that because the funds changed hands in January 2025, ahead of the official campaign period, they did not belong in the Statement of Contributions and Expenditures he submitted to the Commission on Elections. As for the SALN, he contends the money was already gone, spent on election costs, and so was no longer among his assets when he filed.
Prosecutors reject that reasoning. Their position is that the alleged donations went well past the modest gifts a public official may lawfully accept, and that the obligation to declare them in the SALN held even after the money had been turned into other things.
In a televised interview, Marcoleta had acknowledged keeping the contributions from Defensor, Espiritu, and Viray off the record during the 2025 midterm elections, saying the donors preferred to stay unnamed. He has separately claimed the prosecution is meant to sideline him from the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, scheduled to open on July 6.
The matter landed with the Sandiganbayan Third Division under Associate Justice Karl Miranda, and arrived only days after the Iglesia Ni Cristo filled EDSA with a large demonstration contesting the charges. Back in a March 18 en banc resolution, the Commission on Elections had absolved Marcoleta of election offenses while directing that complaints be pursued against the people who allegedly bankrolled his campaign.
