Marcos berated Romualdez, Zaldy Co over fund mess, says Tiangco

Navotas City Rep. Toby Tiangco on Monday said he believes President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had no involvement in the alleged misuse of flood control funds, as he had supposedly heard the President reprimanding former House Speaker Martin Romualdez and former Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Zaldy Co over their huge fund allocations.

According to a report by Tina Panganiban-Perez on 24 Oras, Tiangco recounted a meeting, said to have taken place at a regular Marcos family lunch in Malacañang on November 24 last year, where the President confronted Romualdez with pointed questions as soon as he sat on the dining table.

"Martin, you and Zaldy—how many houses in Forbes (Park) do you plan on buying? How many planes do you need? How many Ferraris do you want? How much money do you want? How much caviar can you eat?"

Tiangco was in that family gathering as his spouse, Michelle Romuáldez-Yap is a cousin of both the President and the former House Speaker.

The lawmaker said Marcos chided Romualdez and Co for allegedly taking funds excessively, which reportedly led to delays on some of the administration’s flagship projects.

The President’s ire, Tiangco added, was reportedly triggered by a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) report showing that Philippine counterpart funding for JICA-supported projects had been removed from the national budget.

Tiangco said Romualdez purportedly returned some of the slashed JICA counterpart funds during the bicameral conference committee, but when the 2025 General Appropriations Act was released in January, Malacañang saw that funding for several projects was not included.

The lawmaker said he believes that Marcos was not involved in any budget irregularities but was thrust in a dire situation and needs to disprove speculations that he was shielding his cousin Romualdez.

"Naturally, people protect their relatives. But the President wanted to show the public that he would not shield his cousin and that no one is above the law," he said.

Tiangco also recalled the President telling Romualdez: "You and Zaldy are taking in so much. The corruption in the House has become outrageous." 

"You know for a fact, Martin, that I don’t get anything from any of that," Tiangco said, quoting the President.

The Navotas lawmaker said that while both Romualdez and Co claimed they did not receive any money, it was clear that “at least one of them did.”

Romualdez’s office has yet to respond to Tiangco’s allegations.—MCG, GMA Integrated News