Senator Loren Legarda has secured Senate approval to skip legislative work on four additional days this month and into September, the latest in a string of health-related absences that have coincided with a graft and plunder inquiry into her family’s solar energy dealings.
Senate Secretary Renato Bantug Jr. said Monday that the senator would be excused from August 24 to 26 and again from September 1 to 2. The clearance marks her fourth medical leave since the beginning of August.
Legarda’s mounting absences trace back to the Office of the Ombudsman’s decision to open a preliminary investigation into her and her son, Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste, over a solar power venture that regulators say went badly wrong. Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla disclosed on July 31 that the two lawmakers, along with former Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, would face scrutiny for plunder, graft, and conflict of interest.
At the center of the case is an accusation that the trio arranged exclusive government rights over solar energy resources through legislative and regulatory maneuvering. According to the Ombudsman, many of the projects tied to those contracts were never built, and canceled agreements left the state saddled with unpaid obligations exceeding P10.44 billion.
The senator has rejected the allegations outright. “I ask the public not to draw unwarranted conclusions from my travel or link it to the recent false and baseless allegations, which undeservedly besmirch a reputation that I have built over decades of public service,” Legarda wrote in a Facebook post.
Her defense of her record has been pointed. “All my public life since 1998, I have always upheld my integrity, which I value dearly. This baseless allegation is a smear on my person that is totally undeserved,” she said, adding that her office had received no formal notice from the Ombudsman about the reported investigation.
The pattern of leave filings has drawn direct comment from investigators. Assistant Ombudsman Mico Clavano told reporters on August 18 that the agency had grown wary of how often the senator’s travel authority had been renewed. “Senator Loren Legarda, I believe, is in the third or fourth extension of her travel authority for medical reasons, which we have begun to find quite suspicious already,” Clavano said, noting the timing against the backdrop of an active case.
That wariness sharpened once the movements of both lawmakers came to light. The National Bureau of Investigation reported that Legarda departed for France and Leviste for Hong Kong on August 2, boarding separate flights days after Remulla went public with the complaints. The Bureau of Immigration later confirmed the departures. Clavano contrasted the congressman’s roughly two-month itinerary across several countries with the senator’s repeatedly stretched medical leave.
Remulla has said authorities expect both Legarda and Leviste to come home and answer the inquiry. Because the complaints have reached the preliminary investigation stage, one step short of formal charges, prosecutors retain the option of asking a court for a precautionary hold-departure order should they choose to pursue it.
