Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV said he has instructed his lawyers to withdraw the cases he filed against four former security personnel who recanted their earlier sworn statements accusing him and several officials of involvement in a scheme tied to the International Criminal Court investigation of former president Rodrigo Duterte.
In a statement posted on X on August 7, 2026, Trillanes said he was responding to a GMA News report on the four ex-soldiers’ recantation. “As a former soldier, I sympathize with what they are going through,” he said in Filipino, adding that their lack of livelihood left them vulnerable to “people with dark political motives.” He expressed hope that the men had learned a hard lesson and that other ex-soldiers “who are still being deceived” would come to see the truth.
The four men, who identified themselves as former bodyguards of former Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Zaldy Co, signed new affidavits taking back allegations they had made against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., former House Speaker Martin Romualdez, Co, and other personalities. According to a report by Mariz Umali on GMA’s “24 Oras,” the men said their earlier statements were untrue and that they had signed the original joint affidavit after being promised financial assistance. They declined to show their faces on camera, citing threats to their lives, and said they simply wanted to live quietly. GMA News reported that the men provided copies of videos showing the new affidavits being notarized and said they had weighed recanting for about two months before executing the documents roughly two weeks earlier.
The recantation marks a reversal in a controversy that surfaced in February 2026, when 18 men identifying themselves as former security personnel of Co — some of them former Marines — publicly alleged they had delivered suitcases of cash to Marcos, Romualdez, Co, and other officials, purportedly from kickbacks on flood control projects. The affidavits, presented by lawyer Levito Baligod, also claimed that Trillanes received $2 million from Co to fund ICC investigators looking into Duterte’s drug war. Trillanes denied the allegation, and the ICC Office of the Prosecutor said its activities are funded by the court’s own budget and that it did not seek outside financial assistance.
Trillanes, a longtime critic of Duterte and a complainant in the crimes-against-humanity case before the ICC, has maintained that the allegations were part of what he called a “well-funded, well-planned” effort to discredit the tribunal and destabilize the Marcos administration. He filed a perjury complaint against the 18 men and cyberlibel complaints against Baligod and several others in March 2026.
The Philippine Navy earlier said most of the 18 men had been dishonorably discharged, while four were never members of the service. The Office of the Ombudsman, which is evaluating the original complaint, and Baligod had not publicly responded to the four men’s recantation as of reporting.
