Precautionary hold departure order requested for Marcoleta, Mike Defensor

The Office of the Ombudsman has asked the Sandiganbayan to issue a precautionary hold departure order against Senator Rodante Marcoleta, former Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Mike Defensor, and two other businessmen.

The request came after the Ombudsman's field investigators recommended the filing of plunder and indirect bribery complaints against Marcoleta, Defensor, as well as businessman Joseph Varias Espiritu, and Aristotle Baluyut Viray for their P75 million campaign donation to Marcoleta’s 2025 Senate bid.

A notice from the Sandiganbayan showed that the Ombudsman’s request, filed on Monday, May 25, was raffled off to the anti-graft court’s Seventh Division.

Based on the recommendation of the Ombudsman’s prosecutors, Marcoleta and his co-respondents should face criminal charges because Marcoleta’s acceptance of a total of P75 million as a campaign donation, which he received in three separate instances, is already a gift and constitutes the crime of plunder.

The Ombudsman, however, has yet to issue a Resolution approving the said recommendation of its investigators.

In a privilege speech on Monday, Marcoleta decried the complaints as politically motivated, if not a case of bending the law. –NB, GMA News