SEN. Erwin Tulfo yesterday hit casinos for what he said was their failure to strictly implement their “know your customer” policy, a failure which allowed certain district engineers of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to gamble away millions in public funds coming from anomalous flood control projects of the department.
Tulfo, chairman of the Senate Committee on Games and Amusement, was referring to the “Bulacan Group of Contractors,” also tagged earlier as “BGC Boys” by Senate President pro tempore Panfilo Lacson.
Tulfo said he is set to file a resolution seeking to investigate casinos which are apparently turning a blind eye to questionable transactions and refusing to report them to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC).
He said the casinos’ failure to report the transactions of the BGC Boys to the AMLC also allowed the DPWH’s erring personnel to launder their loot.
He said such acts should have been flagged.
The BGC Boys earlier identified by Lacson are Henry Alcantara, former Bulacan 1st District engineer; Brice Ericson Hernandez, Alcantara’s former assistant engineer; Jaypee Mendoza, a project engineer; Arjay Domasig, an Engineer 2; and Edrick San Diego, a contractor.
Tulfo said those casinos did not bother to investigate the BGC Boys’ business or profession, even if the fake identification cards they presented to gain entrance to the casinos did not even hint they were tycoons or from billionaire families.
“They (casinos) cannot claim ignorance, suggesting that they did not know these are government officials or working in DPWH just because they used fake IDs,” Tulfo said. “I thought they strictly implement their KYC policy?”
In the faked driver’s licenses, Alcantara was identified as Joseph Villegas, Hernandez as Marvin de Guzman, Mendoza as Peejay Asuncion, and Domasig as Sandro Bernardo Park. San Diego did not use an alias because he is not a government employee.
“Why didn’t they investigate what kind of business or profession their players are into?… They didn’t even raise a single red flag or report this to the Anti-Money Laundering Council despite these individuals bringing in hundreds of millions in cash to the casinos every single week,” Tulfo said.
INCOME
Tulfo said the casinos chose to stay silent because such huge transactions from the BGC Boys would mean bigger income for their businesses.
“If the casinos did their part in monitoring and reporting the transactions, Alcantara, Hernandez, and Mendoza would have been apprehended immediately and their pilfering of public funds could have been stopped,” he said.
With this, Tulfo said, he will file a resolution to investigate casinos which turned a blind eye on the questionable transactions and which did not even bother to inform the AMLC of such incidents.
Tulfo said the aim of the investigation is to craft measures in a bid to end corruption and money laundering being done by public officials using people’s money.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, in an interview with radio dzBB, said the BGC Boys should be ordered to return their loot even as he said that AMLC should act quickly to freeze the assets of those involved in the anomalous flood control projects.
“(Public Works) Secretary Vince Dizon was right when he said that they [those involved in anomalous flood control projects] should return the money because as we can see, an assistant district engineer can bet P400 million … The AMLC should also be quick to freeze their bank accounts and assets, otherwise the government will be running after the money once they have been already withdrawn from the banks),” Gatchalian said in Filipino.
CUSTODY
Rep. Terry Ridon, lead chair of the House Infrastructure Committee, said dismissed Bulacan first district assistant engineer Jaypee Mendoza left the protective custody of the House of Representatives last Friday to be with his family.
“Upon his own request, Mr. Jaypee Mendoza has left the protective custody of the House of Representatives on 12 September 2025,” Ridon told reporters in a text message. “He expressed his wish to be with his family at this time.”
Ridon said the House Infrastructure Committee is hoping that Mendoza will continue to appear in future committee hearings “to provide further information relevant to the ongoing inquiry.”
It was Mendoza who backed the testimony of Engineer Brice Ericson Hernandez, the former assistant district engineer of Bulacan’s First Engineering District who has accused Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva of receiving 30 percent in kickbacks from their flood control projects in Bulacan.
During the joint panel’s hearing last week. Hernandez presented screenshots of an alleged Viber conversation between Alcantara and a certain “Sen. Joel” which, he said, were taken by Mendoza using another phone since the text messages that Villanueva sent were “disappearing messages.”
Before he testified, Mendoza asked the committee for security after receiving death threats, saying he received threats on his mobile phone last September 1 and another one while he was testifying before the Infra Comm.
Mendoza then confirmed that the Viber messages were from Villanueva. He said the photos were taken in October 2023 and showed the senator complaining of his small flood control budget and requesting additional allocations from the DPWH through Alcantara.
INFRA PROBE BODY
Senate President Vicente Sotto III yesterday said he will formally request President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to certify as urgent a bill he filed seeking the creation of a permanent Independent People’s Commission (IPC).
In a statement, Sotto said Senate Bill No. 1215 will make sure the President’s executive order creating a three-man independent probe commission for infrastructure will become a permanent law.
“While the President’s executive order is immediate, my bill ensures permanence. The IPC will not just be a stop-gap measure; it will institutionalize oversight and prevent instances like this from happening again in the future,” he said.
The President’s executive order last week created the three-man Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) that will look into infrastructure programs undertaken in the last 10 years, starting with controversial flood control projects under the DPWH.
The IPC will not be limited to DPWH projects but will also cover other departments like the Department of Agriculture, Department of Health, and Department of Education.
“Corruption in projects does not only happen in roads and bridges. It also affects farm-to-market roads, hospitals, and schools. That’s why this bill is important — because it protects taxpayers’ money and makes sure projects truly serve the people,” Sotto said.
Sotto said he welcomes the filing of a similar bill at the House of Representatives.
“It doesn’t matter which chamber moves first. Whether the House or Senate, what’s important is that Congress acts fast so we can pass this into law without delay,” he said, adding the IPC aims to bring back people’s trust in the government.
Lacson, chairman of the Blue Ribbon Committee, welcomed the expanded coverage of the ICI.
“In the like manner, I hope the scope of the sumbongsapnagulo.ph website will likewise be expanded by not limiting its coverage to flood control projects. Better yet, the website can be made more valuable to taxpayers by including data on funding for all infrastructure projects of all agencies, from the National Expenditure Program to the General Appropriations Act, as well as identities of the proponents of congressional amendments or insertions and all the way to the project implementation and completion. And yes, complete with geotagging, please,” he said.
NO POLITICS
Senate minority leader Alan Peter Cayetano said he will support the ICI only if its members are free from political ambitions and ties to big business.
Malacañang on Saturday named former Public Works secretary Rogelio Singson and SGV country managing partner Rossana Fajardo as ICI members, with Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong as advisor. The ICI head has yet to be named.
“If they will be appointed to the ICI, can they commit that they will not seek any national office in 2028? They might have integrity, but they must use the commission to run for 2028. Will they sign [an agreement] that they have no conflict of interest?” Cayetano said in Filipino.
“Because some of the credible people now being interviewed are part of a conglomerate and are working for oligarchs that also have their interest. Maybe not in infrastructure but in other things,” he added.
Cayetano emphasized that credibility is non-negotiable, warning that any perception of bias or political agenda could undermine the integrity of the investigation.
House minority leader Marcelino Libanan said he expects the ICI “to conduct a highly aggressive investigation aimed at stamping out corruption in flood control and related projects, restoring public trust, and holding all culprits fully accountable.”
“We expect the fact-finding Commission to leave no stone unturned — to follow the money, unmask the perpetrators, and recommend the filing of charges against every official and private contractor involved in the plunder of public infrastructure funds,” Libanan said in a statement. “This is the only way to end the culture of impunity and make sure that future projects truly serve the Filipino people.”
With the creation of the commission, Libanan said the government now has “a vital opportunity to restore public trust and ensure that every peso of infrastructure funding serves the public good.”
“We will also work to translate its findings into stronger legislative safeguards to prevent the plunder of public works money from ever happening again,” he said. — With Wendell Vigilia
