Former congressman Mike Defensor went on Facebook Friday to reject the plunder charge built around a P75-million campaign donation, arguing the case collapses on a basic point: not a single peso came from government coffers. “The accusation is anchored on CAMPAIGN DONATIONS. Yet there was NO GOVERNMENT FUND involved. NOTHING WAS STOLEN from the public treasury. NO FAVOR was requested, promised, or given in exchange for any donation,” he wrote, asking how such contributions could form the basis of a plunder complaint against him and his co-respondents.
That same day, the Office of the Ombudsman brought the case before the Sandiganbayan, where the Third Division drew it in the raffle. Named alongside Defensor are Senator Rodante Marcoleta and two others, Aristotle Viray and Joseph Espiritu.
Defensor widened his attack by pointing to what he termed “selective justice.” He cited donations to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s 2022 campaign from Special Assistant to the President Anton Lagdameo Jr., Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office chief Melquiades Robles. “If campaign donations are now being used as the basis for a PLUNDER case, then these circumstances deserve AT LEAST THE SAME LEVEL OF SCRUTINY AND INVESTIGATION. The law cannot have ONE STANDARD for political opponents and ANOTHER for political allies,” he said.
He indicated he would meet the charges in the proper courts, adding that the prosecution would not deter him from continuing to expose alleged anomalies in flood control projects. Defensor echoed those remarks in person at the opening of a three-day Iglesia ni Cristo rally held to back Marcoleta.
The charges themselves reach beyond plunder. The four respondents are also accused of breaching Presidential Decree No. 46, which forbids public officials from receiving and private persons from giving gifts on any occasion.
According to the complaint, the money flowed in three January 2025 contributions toward Marcoleta’s Senate bid: P30 million from Defensor, P25 million from Viray, and P20 million from Espiritu. Prosecutors said the P75-million total surpassed the P50-million threshold that triggers plunder and never surfaced in the senator’s SALN as of June 30, 2025.
The Ombudsman, in its own statement, cast the filing as a step it did not take “made lightly or by choice,” resting on cash donations it said were undisclosed. “These facts are not in dispute; the senator has publicly confirmed receiving the money, and they can be stipulated at the onset of trial. What remains is a question of law: whether these undisputed facts constitute plunder and bribery,” the office said.
Marcoleta, who acknowledged in a November 2025 television appearance that he kept the contributions off his records at his donors’ request for anonymity, maintained in his counter-affidavit that the sum was private money. “The donations were likewise not reflected in my Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth 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 stated.
Prosecutors dismissed the senator’s appeal to “utang na loob,” or debt of gratitude, as no defense for a public official. “The moment gratitude is used to explain away P75 million in undisclosed money, it stops being “utang na loob” and becomes exactly what our plunder and bribery laws were written to prevent,” the Ombudsman said.
