The disaster-prone Philippines invested billions in flood control. Then officials looted the funds

By Lex Harvey, CNN

(CNN) — Ace Aguirre was just two bites into his oatmeal on the morning of November 4 when he noticed something strange: mud had seeped onto the living room floor of his bungalow in Cotcot, a village in the Philippines’ Cebu province.

The moments that followed will be forever seared into Aguirre’s memory. His living room furniture floating; the terrifying few minutes when he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pry the front door open; his son praying to God as the water rose to their chests; his daughter, who can’t swim, perched high on a pillar as water and cars gushed by, inches from her feet.

“I don’t know how we were able to survive. One detail that didn’t go our way and many of us could have died,” Aguirre told CNN.

That morning Typhoon Kalmaegi dumped over a month’s worth of rain, causing rivers and waterways in Cebu to swell and unleashing catastrophic flash flooding that killed more than 230 people nationwide.

One of the dead was Aguirre’s neighbor, a mother of two, who drowned when she became trapped in her kitchen. He had tried to save her but couldn’t get her out in time.

Torrential downpours and deadly flooding in the tropical, disaster-prone Philippines are not new. But revelations in recent months that politicians, officials and contractors had looted billions of dollars from the nationwide program supposed to mitigate their effects have roiled the country.

Prior to the deadly flooding, a citizens’ group in Cebu had called for an audit of flood control projects along the Cotcot River, upstream from where Aguirre lives, according to local media.

The scandal has embroiled dozens of high-ranking lawmakers and officials who allegedly received kickbacks to award contracts. Those revelations have sparked huge youth-led anti-government protests against corruption and wealthy elites, similar to those seen this year in Indonesia and Nepal.

Aguirre had been watching the political drama unfold far away in Manila, the capital, for months, but he didn’t expect it to come to his doorstep.

“All of a sudden you become a direct victim,” he said. “It hits different.”

The flooding in November prompted Cebu’s governor Pamela Baricuatro to demand an investigation into the 26 billion pesos ($443 million) in flood-control projects in the province which officials in Manila admitted “should have been working” by the time disaster struck.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. later visited the region and promised to clear and clean the waterways, and de-clog drainage systems, in time for rainy season next year.

The previous July he had revealed a government flood control program worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9.2 billion) had been plagued by corruption.

He said an internal audit found many of the 10,000 projects his government had overseen since he came to power in 2022 had been built using substandard materials or not at all, he said, referring to the projects as “ghost projects.”

CNN has reached out to the Philippine government for comment.

When Marcos Jr exposed the fraud, he “opened a can of worms” that has since spun out of his control, said Sol Iglesias, associate professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines.

Testimonies in the House and Senate have revealed “an entire system of plunder and corruption that has been facilitated by the very agencies that were responsible for budgeting, planning, implementing, monitoring and checking on the financial soundness of these infrastructures,” Iglesias said.

In September, Finance Secretary Raph Recto told a Senate hearing up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2 billion) in funding for flood control may have been lost to corruption in the past two years, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Marcos Jr has vowed to jail at least 37 congressmen and other officials responsible for the scams by Christmas, and seven have been thrown behind bars so far. The government has also frozen about 12 billion pesos ($204 million) in assets of individuals linked to the scandal.

The scandal has galvanized ordinary Filipinos, who have taken to the streets to protest decades of unchecked corruption.

“This is the last straw for the Filipino people,” said Tiffany Faith Brillante, the head of Youth Rage Against Corruption in the Philippines, which has been involved in the protests.

“The corruption today is no longer just a symptom of weak governance,” she said. “It’s deeply rooted in how power is held in the government, how budgets are allocated, and how accountability is constantly avoided.”

Marcos Jr has insisted he did not know of the fraud being perpetrated. He has positioned himself as a corruption crusader, shaming those responsible for the graft and egging on the protesters.

But as more top-ranking officials have become implicated in the scandal, some have pointed the finger back at the president.

One of those people is Zaldy Co, a one-time Marcos Jr ally and former House appropriations committee chairperson, who has become one of the central figures accused in the scandal. He fled the country and is currently a fugitive.

While in hiding, he posted a series of explosive videos to his social media account, accusing Marcos Jr and his family members of profiting from the corruption – charges which the president has denied.

Marcos’s family members have also been caught up in the drama. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, a cousin of Marcos, resigned as House Speaker in September over the controversy, though he has denied any involvement in the scandal.

Beyond the scale of the alleged theft, what has made this scandal hit so hard is that for many Filipinos it feels like history is repeating itself, said Aries Arugay, a Filipino political scientist and visiting senior fellow at the Singapore-based think tank ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

“Corruption and the Marcoses are almost synonyms in Philippine politics,” Arugay said.

Marcos Jr’s father, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, ruled the Philippines with an iron fist from 1965 until his ouster in 1986, with the country living under martial law for about half that time. His regime committed systemic human rights abuses and engaged in widespread corruption, stealing an estimated $10 billion from public coffers.

The flood control scandal has reminded Filipinos of the dark days many experienced under Marcos Sr. One of the biggest anti-corruption protests was held on a significant date, September 21, when in 1972 Marcos Sr imposed martial law.

Marcos Jr’s landslide victory in 2022 marked an extraordinary comeback for the notorious political family, which critics claimed was made possible in part by disinformation campaigns which whitewashed the history of the Marcos era.

And though officials have warned the looting of the flood prevention program may have started under Marcos’ predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, the disparity between the lifestyles of the elite and regular Filipinos has been a source of anger under the current president.

Social media videos posted by the children of wealthy politicians and contractors flaunting their lavish lifestyles have added salt to the wounds of angry citizens, Arugay said.

“When people are being submerged in flood water, the politicians are in Paris, riding their private jets,” he said.

This backlash against so-called “nepo kids” mirrors similar anti-corruption protests across Asia this year, including in Indonesia and Nepal, where Gen-Z led protests overthrew the government.

Like those protests, young people have been some of the loudest voices calling for accountability in the Philippines.

“We inherit the consequences of corruption and systemic abuse in our country if the government continues to steal, oppress and ignore the people,” Brillante said.

“We really want to hold accountable and jail every single official involved in corruption,” Brillante said.

“President Marcos cannot be spared, because at the end of the day, he’s the one who signs and approves the national budget every single year.”

While public confidence in Marcos Jr has wavered, he’s not likely to meet the same fate as his father, who was unseated in a public uprising.

Marcos Jr is more than halfway through his six-year term, and Philippine presidents have single term limits, so he will not be eligible for re-election in 2028.

“We haven’t seen the equivalent of a smoking gun,” Iglesias said.

“But if (we get) that smoking gun, for example, evidence of his directly benefitting financially from this corruption, then that will I think push the administration over the edge. Right now, it’s teetering.”

Recent public opinion polling by the firm WR Numero found Marcos Jr’s satisfaction rating was 21% in November, a 14% drop from August.

For someone who came so close to losing everything, Aguirre is upbeat and grateful. But he’s not optimistic that this wave of public momentum will produce any meaningful change in the Philippines.

“With our resilience, we can still move forward, but the quality of life will still be the same.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.