Senator Rodante Marcoleta is under scrutiny after revelations that his wife holds board positions in insurance firms that issued bonds to contractors now at the center of the multi-billion peso flood control corruption scandal, Bilyonaryo.com reported.
Edna M. Marcoleta serves as an independent director and audit committee chair of Stronghold Insurance Co., Inc., one of the country’s top non-life insurers. Records show that in 2022, Sara Discaya, through Alpha & Omega Contractor—implicated in alleged ghost projects—secured a bond obligation with Stronghold.
Corporate filings also revealed Edna’s role as a non-executive director of Milestone Guaranty and Assurance in 2023. That same year, Milestone issued a ₱19.29 million bond for Elite General Contractor, another Discaya-owned firm, tied to a ₱192.9 million road dike project in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro. Senate investigators later flagged the project as non-existent.
“Where is the almost ₱193 million peso fund? We went to the exact location… Is it a ghost or an illusion?” Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson asked during the August 20 hearing.
The revelations raise conflict-of-interest concerns for Marcoleta, who has been a visible figure in the Senate Blue Ribbon probe into questionable Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) projects. At one point, Lacson confronted him directly: “Why are you so protective of the Discayas?!” Marcoleta pushed back, saying, “I am not protective. It’s good you said that, Mr. Chair. Can we have this recorded?!”
Marcoleta had earlier sought the inclusion of the Discayas in the witness protection program while presiding over the Blue Ribbon Committee. The couple later submitted affidavits implicating DPWH officials and lawmakers in the scandal, before Lacson assumed the committee chairmanship.
Edna Marcoleta’s corporate profile at Milestone also listed her affiliation with the Congressional Spouses Foundation, Inc., a role she held during her husband’s tenure as SAGIP partylist representative.
The questionable Naujan project was part of the “AGILA” initiative of Oriental Mindoro Representative Arnan Panaligan. In the same hearing, Lacson criticized the program: “Wherever there are multi-million projects, the AGILA lands, but the places where AGILA lands are still submerged in flood.”
Panaligan has denied involvement in the irregular implementation, although a 2024 social media post showed him at a ribbon-cutting for a Stronghold Insurance branch in Mindoro.
Meanwhile, the Discayas’ construction firms have had their licenses revoked. The Anti-Money Laundering Council has frozen 427 accounts across 16 banks linked to their companies—Alpha & Omega, St. Gerrard, St. Matthew, and St. Timothy—which collectively received around ₱180 billion in deposits from 2016 to 2025. The couple remain under witness protection, with their application to become state witnesses still under review.
