MANILA: Many powerful politicians linked to corruption in Philippine flood control projects will be in jail by Christmas, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Thursday, after dozens of officials were named as suspects in a multibillion-dollar graft scandal.
Public outrage has grown since August in the Philippines, after an audit ordered by Marcos revealed that billions of pesos worth of flood-control facilities were substandard, poorly documented, or nonexistent.
An independent fact-finding commission Marcos created has filed criminal complaints for graft and corruption and plunder against 37 suspects — which include powerful senators, members of Congress and wealthy business people — as well as more than 80 construction company executives and nine government officials for allegedly evading taxes totaling nearly 9 billion pesos ($152 million).
“Before Christmas, many of those named here … will have their cases completed. They will be locked up. They will not have a Merry Christmas,” Marcos said during a press briefing in Manila.
“We don’t file cases for optics. We file cases to put people in jail.”
The Department of Finance has estimated that the Philippine economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (around $2 billion) from 2023 to 2025 due to corruption in flood control projects.
The lawsuits were also aimed at recovering the huge funds that were stolen, Marcos added.
The graft scandal has sparked street protests in the Philippines over the last few months, with activists, former Cabinet members, Catholic church leaders, and retired generals among those calling for sweeping criminal prosecution.
Corruption has emerged as one of the main national concerns among Filipinos for the first time in four years, according to a survey released by OCTA Research in October.
Civil society groups and church leaders are planning more anti-corruption rallies later in November, as the controversy has flared again following massive flooding from powerful typhoons in recent weeks that submerged many parts of the country and killed at least 259 people, while displacing more than a million others.
Philippine officials said last month that a new jail in Quezon City could take in hundreds of detainees and will be able to accommodate corruption suspects when they undergo trial.
