Fresh testimony from two witnesses has prompted the National Bureau of Investigation to slow down its planned filing of criminal cases over the towering cauldron built for the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, with the agency now examining whether the structure was billed to the government on two separate occasions.
NBI Director Melvin Matibag disclosed in a dzBB interview that the pair recently turned over documents and statements that, in the bureau’s reading, point to a payment recorded more than once for work tied to the New Clark City landmark in Tarlac. “We saw that there’s a double payment,” he said, explaining that certain company payments appeared logged twice in a document he declined to identify.
Beyond the apparent duplication, investigators are weighing figures that suggest the price was inflated well past what the job merited. Matibag placed the reasonable cost of the cauldron at roughly P30 million, far below the P55 million ultimately declared for it.
That gap, along with the newly surfaced evidence, is why the director backed away from his earlier intention to lodge complaints within the week. He said the material warranted a more deliberate approach before anything reaches the courts. “It needs to be carefully studied so we can be sure. We will cross-check it against the initial documents we found,” Matibag said.
The NBI has drawn a boundary around what falls within its lens. Matibag stressed that the inquiry centers on undertakings of the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee, and not on the venues delivered by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority. His reasoning rests on the money trail: PHISGOC drew its financing from the Philippine Olympic Committee, the Philippine Sports Commission and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, making those transactions the bureau’s chief concern.
The organizing committee’s leadership has itself become a thread in the probe. According to the network RMN, the NBI is still working to pin down the formal capacity of Senator Alan Peter Cayetano within PHISGOC, since paperwork identifying him as its chairman exists even though no official record documenting the post has surfaced.
The 12.5-meter cauldron, designed by the late National Artist Francisco Mañosa, became one of the more heavily criticized fixtures of the country’s hosting duties, with lawmakers questioning its price tag long before the current criminal inquiry took shape.
