The government may collect at least P10 billion worth of insurance claims from flood control projects bagged by contractor couple Pacifico ‘Curlee’ and Cezarah ‘Sarah’ Discaya in the last three years alone.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, gave this estimate on Tuesday after learning from the Insurance Commission (IC) that 30 percent of the value of a project is covered by insurance.
‘Regarding the issue of flood control, we are now addressing this because we see two main problems. First, the ghost projects, and the substandard projects,’ IC Commissioner Reynaldo Regalado said speaking in Filipino during a budget hearing in the Senate.
‘We can still recover about 30 percent of the ghost projects.’ he said in Filipino.
When Gatchalian asked how much the government could recover from the reported ‘ghost’ flood control projects, Regalado could not give an estimate yet, saying the assessment is still ongoing.
The IC chief added they have yet to see the ‘actual situation per insurance and per project,’ which he said is ‘very exhaustive.’
Gatchalian later inquired if the bond companies have ‘sufficient capital.’
‘Because of the scale-we’re talking about Discaya-I think his contract was around P30 billion? So just imagine, if we’re talking of one-third, that’s P10 billion that the government could potentially recover,’ he pointed out.
He was apparently referring to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s report that from 2022 to 2025, companies and joint ventures of the Discaya couple cornered 421 projects totaling P31,035,712,926.70.
But Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon later revealed that the companies owned by the couple had actually secured almost ?78 billion worth of projects since 2016.
Regalado assured the public that the government is taking steps to recover the 30 percent insurance claims from these graft-tainted infrastructure projects, citing the two agreements that the IC and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) are set to sign on Wednesday.
‘We would be signing a memorandum of agreement and a data sharing agreement with the DPWH to ensure that we have the same data and somehow the issue of restitution, at least on the 30 percent, can be covered by insurance,’ he said.
‘The next day, we would be having a meeting on how we can have a whole-of-government approach and restitution because it has to be clearly addressed-our public is waiting on how we’re supposed to be doing that,’ Regalado added.
At present, the IC estimated about ?4.9 billion worth of assets frozen in connection with the anomalous flood control works. /jpv