Almost every member of the Senate approached former Public Works and Highways Secretary Manuel Bonoan seeking money for projects, with only Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson staying clear of the practice, according to testimony delivered Tuesday before the Sandiganbayan Third Division.
That account came from Roberto Bernardo, a former undersecretary at the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), who took the witness stand again in the malversation case confronting former Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. The charge centers on a supposed ghost project in Pandi, Bulacan, valued at P92.8 million.
Under questioning by prosecutor Moreno, Bernardo described a system in which lawmakers and other proponents could tap a pool of DPWH money that Bonoan controlled at his own discretion. The former official pegged that pool at upward of P10 billion, set aside for requests to be folded into the National Expenditure Program — the executive branch’s detailed draft of the proposed national budget.
Requests of this kind did not require paperwork, Bernardo said. Senators seeking funds would simply speak with Bonoan directly, an arrangement Moreno pressed him on given the sums at stake. “We’re talking of billions, then, ‘pwedeng boka-boka’ (verbal conversation is allowed)?” the prosecutor asked. Bernardo held that no written letters were needed for a senator to make such a request.
Moreno turned to Bernardo’s written statement and asked whether every senator had sought funding apart from Lacson. “Almost all senators except Ping,” Bernardo replied. The prosecutor also drew agreement from the witness that requesting an allocation was not itself improper — the line was crossed only when a kickback changed hands.
On the specifics tied to Revilla, Bernardo had said during the earlier bail proceedings that the former senator secured P1.5 billion in project allocations after going to Bonoan. He told the court that P500 million of that came back as kickbacks, packed into 15 boxes and handed over across three separate deliveries spanning 2024 and 2025. Bernardo said he witnessed the first and third of those handovers.
The witness drew a firm line around his own involvement, denying he pocketed anything from the Revilla project. “As I have said, I did not earn from Revilla. I earned from other transactions,” he told the court. Having already returned P500 million as a condition of his acceptance into the witness protection program, Bernardo pledged to hand back a further P1 billion to the government.
