The P75 million that Senator Rodante Marcoleta accepted from three benefactors during the 2025 election cycle was characterized by the lawmaker himself as belonging to him personally, an election agency official told the Sandiganbayan.
That account came from Atty. Victoria Kadeja Besinio of the Commission on Elections’ Political Finance and Affairs Department, who appeared as a prosecution witness on the opening day of the anti-graft court’s hearing on Marcoleta’s plea for bail. The senator is seeking provisional release while facing a plunder charge tied to a campaign contribution that prosecutors say he never reported.
Besinio recounted what Marcoleta had submitted to the poll body in a sworn filing. “With regard to his verified position paper, Senator Marcoleta said that those funds were received by him in his personal capacity, and so they became part of his personal funds, and that those funds were not earmarked or restricted for purposes of the campaign, and that they were received by him prior to the campaign,” she said in response to questioning from Sandiganbayan Third Division Associate Justice Ronald Moreno. Head Topics
The Inquirer reported that state prosecutor Joshua Tan seized on this framing, telling the court that Marcoleta had effectively conceded the money was never a campaign contribution to begin with.
According to Besinio, the Comelec itself stopped short of ruling on what the P75 million actually was, declining to categorize the nature of the sum handed to the senator by his three contributors.
The witness also described how the agency came to know who was behind the money. She testified that the donors had originally sought to keep their identities hidden, and it was Marcoleta who ultimately disclosed their names to the Comelec through his verified position paper, the Inquirer reported.
Charged alongside the senator are the three men identified as the sources of the funds: former Anakalusugan party-list representative Mike Defensor and businessmen Joseph Espiritu and Aristotle Viray. All four are being held at the New Quezon City Jail, since plunder is classified as a non-bailable offense and their petitions for temporary liberty remain pending.
Prosecutors allege that Marcoleta took in the P75 million while he was still sitting as a party-list congressman and failed to reflect it in the statement of contributions and expenditures he filed with the Comelec. The senator’s legal team has pressed a separate argument that the Sandiganbayan has no authority over the matter, contending through counsel David Gabriel that jurisdiction rests with the poll body because the dispute is bound up with elections.
