The P75 million donated by former Quezon City Rep. Mike Defensor and businessmen Joseph Espiritu and Aristotle Viray to Sen. Rodante D. Marcoleta was intended to fund his 2025 senatorial campaign, not for his personal use, based on notarized deeds of donation obtained by the media and testimony during the senator’s plunder bail hearings.
The deed covering Defensor’s P30-million, Espiritu’s P25-million, and Viray’s P20-million donation, executed on January 6, 2025, January 8, 2025, and January 9, 2025 respectively, state on their face that the money was given in consideration of the donor’s support for Marcoleta’s possible candidacy in the May 12, 2025 elections.
The prosecution’s witness from the Office of the Ombudsman, Field Investigation Bureau Director Maria Melinda Mananghaya-Henson, confirmed in court that the three deeds of donation appear to be identical indicating that Defensor and Espiritu donated on the same terms.
The documentary record belies Marcoleta’s position that the funds were the senator’s “personal” money, the characterization Marcoleta advanced before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to explain why the donations were not disclosed in his Statement of Contributions and Expenditures (SOCE).
Marcoleta himself, in a sworn affidavit, stated that Viray “committed to donate to my campaign funds” should he decide to run for senator, and that the businessman turned over the P20 million “in support of my senatorial candidacy.”
The affidavit adds that Viray provided a further P1.2 million to cover the 6-percent donor’s tax, which the senator’s authorized representatives remitted to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
“Mr. Viray did not ask for, and I did not promise, perform, or withhold, any official act in consideration of the donation,” Marcoleta said in the same affidavit, adding that no part of the money came from public funds, government contracts, procurement transactions, franchises or regulatory favors.
The campaign character of the donations was reinforced by the prosecution’s first witness, Atty. Victoria Kadeja Besinio of the Comelec’s Political Finance and Affairs Department (Comelec-PFAD), at the September 3 hearing.
On cross-examination, Besinio admitted that the premise of her recommendation eventually adopted by the Comelec to charge the donors with an election offense for non-reporting was precisely that the donations were in the nature of campaign contributions or monies used to fund Marcoleta’s campaign.
Besinio also acknowledged that Comelec Resolution No. 11109 allows a report of contribution to be filed by the candidate or party treasurer on behalf of the contributor.
On clarificatory questioning by the court, she conceded that no election offense may be pursued against Marcoleta in any event, as Republic Act (RA) 7166 has decriminalized violations of Section 109 of the Omnibus Election Code.
To date, the Comelec’s Law Department has taken no action on the recommendation to file cases against the donors.
At the September 14 hearing, Atty. Lawrence Arroyo, counsel for Defensor and Espiritu, drew from Mananghaya-Henson the admission that she was not present when the deed of donation was executed.
Arroyo likewise invoked the res inter alios acta rule against the prosecution’s use of a video of Marcoleta by arguing that under Section 29, Rule 130, extrajudicial admissions of an accused cannot bind his co-accused.
He also objected to portions of the witness’s judicial affidavit as speculative particularly the theory that Marcoleta could potentially protect or defend his friends and allies.
Mananghaya-Henson agreed that the donation came from private funds.
Under cross-examination by Viray’s counsel, Atty. Chris Ocampo, Mananghaya-Henson confirmed that she had no information that the co-accused donors had ever met.
Asked whether the investigation uncovered any evidence of communication among them, she could cite only the fact that the deeds of donation were notarized and subscribed on the same date and at the same location.
The witness also confirmed that Viray’s name was never mentioned in the video on which the prosecution relies, and that neither the video nor the fact-finding investigation contained any mention of an “investment.”
The donors, she also confirmed, were not interviewed during the fact-finding stage, which she described as confidential.
Besinio, for her part, had earlier confirmed that the donors were never parties to the Comelec-PFAD fact-finding investigation,.only Marcoleta was issued a Show Cause Order, and that she learned the donors’ identities only from the tax returns and bank payment slips attached to the senator’s Verified Position Paper, which the donors neither signed nor helped prepare.
The Comelec-PFAD recommended the filing of a complaint against the donors for preliminary investigation without first conducting a fact-finding investigation into them.#