On the same day that the first part of this column was published, Tuesday, Nov. 11, Bonoan, who was already tagged for investigation by the government in the more recent scandal, fled the country for "medical treatment" in the US, which is what corrupt government officials here in the Philippines do to try to avoid questioning or prosecution.
The reason I am posting this now is that there was a development concerning this individual earlier this evening (Saturday, Nov. 29). I am not able to divulge details of that, because that is confidential business, but because what happened a) mortally offended me, both for my own sake and for the good of my organization, b) was just completely fucking wrong on moral, ethical, and common sense grounds, and c) proved that I was absolutely right in what I wrote or implied in the columns that follow (and thank you to my perceptive daughter for instantly realizing that and pointing it out), this story needs to get out there. Believe me, there are a HELL of a lot of details I have that I didn't air out publicly; you want to try me, you crooked bastard, go right ahead, and see how that works out for you. The development (that's a mild word for it, but I'll stick with that for now) this evening was so infuriating and so offensive that I have now taken a personal interest in seeing you suffer, jackass. And the individual who passed it along (not saying who that was, yet, but you know who you are) better watch out, too. I didn't want to get involved too much in this whole corruption mess, but guess what, now I am. May whatever God you subscribe to have mercy on you, because I will not.
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The skeleton in Bonoan’s closet
Ben Kritz
Rough Trade
First of two parts (Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025).
LAST week, the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI), which is beginning to look a lot less like an investigative star chamber and more like a major cog in a complicated damage-control machine, made a recommendation to the Ombudsman that former Dept. of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) secretary Manuel M. Bonoan, along with two former undersecretaries, be investigated for possible violations of the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. This is in connection with one of the literally hundreds of flood-control projects that have so far been discovered to have been fatally compromised by graft, in this case a P72.6-million project in Plaridel, Bulacan.
The complaint, or recommendation, or FYI, or whatever it actually is that has been passed from the ICI to the Ombudsman’s office seems quite sketchy, at least as it has been reported in the news. The project itself is described as being illicit not because it wasn’t built, but because it was built somewhere other than it was supposed to be, which is just weird. That’s one clue that an organized whitewash may be underway.
A second clue is that the ICI seems to have specified that the Ombudsman look into violations of the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards, which is serious but not the same kind of dire crime that is represented by a violation of the Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, which is what is automatically implied – at least where public officials are concerned – in every one of these cases. A “recommendation” that would have raised far less public suspicion would have been for the ICI to simply inform the Ombudsman, “Here is our information, which we believe indicates illegal acts may have occurred. Please figure out which ones, if any, and proceed accordingly.” After all, that is kind of the Ombudsman’s job.
The third clue is the skeleton in Manny Bonoan’s closet with regard to the DPWH, or more specifically, not that the skeleton is there, but the way it was handled, or not handled, as the case may be.
Back in the early 2000s, World Bank funded a road improvement project here in the Philippines called the National Roads Improvement and Management Program, or NRIMP. The total project, which was originally scheduled to run from 2000 to 2009, had a total price tag of $2 billion; Phase One of the project involved a $150 million loan to the government from World Bank, with $133.2 million of that being disbursed by the loan closing date in March, 2007.
For the sake of accuracy, I will quote directly from the public version of the World Bank integrity report:
“In April 2003, INT [i.e., the Integrity Vice Presidency] was informed by the Bank team supervising the Project that the procurement process relating to the award of two NRIMP-1 contracts (the NRIMP-1 Contracts) might have been tainted by fraud and corruption. Those Contracts, with a combined estimated value of approximately P1.88 billion (US$33 million), were for the rehabilitation of parts of the Surigao-Davao Coastal Road [in Mindanao], the Kabankalan-Basay Road [in Negros], and the San Enrique-Vallehermoso Road [also in Negros]. Bank staff had determined that the results of the 2001-2002 bid process showed indications of collusion, most notably the questionable disqualification of some of the potential bidders and abnormally high bid prices. The Bank’s task team accordingly declined to issue a letter of no objection to the results of this first round, asked DPWH to re-bid, and referred the matter to INT. Finding the bid prices still unjustifiably high after the 2004 re-bid, the Bank asked DPWH to carry out a third round of bidding. The Bank ultimately decided not to provide a no-objection letter a third time, for the same reason, in 2006. The contracts were not awarded under the NRIMP project.”
To summarize what the World Bank team discovered, a well-organized cartel of DPWH officials, politicians, and foreign and domestic contractors pre-selected winning bidders for construction contracts, who bid inflated prices to cover the subsequent bribe payments, including compensation to the losing bidders, who were coached ahead of time on how much they should inflate their bids to make it look like as though the process was legitimately selecting the lowest bidders. Prospective bidders who did not cooperate would be frozen out from any future DPWH bidding.
As a result of this investigation, World Bank informed the Department of Finance and the Office of the Ombudsman in 2006 even before it was finished, and then formally turned over its complete findings in 2007. That report presumably included names of those involved, although for the sake of not compromising any criminal or administrative investigation, those are not included in the public version of the report. For its part, World Bank “blacklisted” seven companies and one individual from participating in any World Bank-backed projects for periods ranging from seven years to infinity. Since some of those sanctioned were based in China, it also shared it report with Chinese government, to support whatever action it might want to take against its own people.
So where does Manny Bonoan fit into all this? Stay tuned for Part 2 on Thursday.
Second of two parts. (Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025)
FORMER Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Sec. Manuel M. Bonoan was named along with several others by the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) in a recommendation to the Ombudsman that the latter investigate possible illicit actions related to a P72.6-million flood control project, as was widely reported in the news. That Bonoan’s name would come up should not come as a surprise; he was, after all, in a position as DPWH secretary to know about any corrupt activities within his department. Questions about whether he actually did or not, and whether he had any involvement in them are unavoidable.
When he was appointed as DPWH secretary by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on June 30, 2022 – one of the first cabinet appointments the then-newly inaugurated president made – Bonoan began his second stint with the department, adding to a career that might be record-breaking in terms of its longevity. Bonoan first started working for what was then known as the Bureau of Highways in 1967, when he was still a senior in college. The 22-year-old civil engineering aide would become a sort of poster child for the DPWH, working his way up from that lowest spot on the totem pole to become an Assistant Secretary for Planning by 1987, and then being advanced to the rank of Undersecretary in 1994.
In 2000, just about the time the first phase of the World Bank-backed National Roads Improvement and Management Program (NRIMP) project was getting underway with the DPWH as the implementing agency, Bonoan was named Senior Undersecretary and made chairman of the Pre-qualification, Bids, and Awards Committee (PBAC) for Construction Projects in the Visayas and Mindanao. As explained in the first part of this column on Tuesday, World Bank later discovered that bidding and awarding of construction contracts for one component of the NRIMP, involving one road project in Mindanao and two in Negros, had been controlled by a cartel involving DPWH officials, politicians, and cooperating contractors. The ensuing investigation by World Bank’s Integrity Vice Presidency group eventually led to World Bank blacklisting seven companies and one individual, and passing its report on to the Department of Finance and the Office of the Ombudsman.
The World Bank team discovered the collusion in the results of the bidding for several contracts for work on these three highways in 2001-2002, and “declined to issue a letter of no objection.” The normal process on these types of projects being funded by World Bank or similar institutions is for bidding and awards to be carried out by the implementing agency, and then reviewed by the bank, which is sensible since the bank is one the ultimately paying for it. Normally this is a routine procedure that results in the contracts being cleared to proceed, but it wasn’t in this case. World Bank asked DPWH to conduct the bidding again, which happened in 2004, but incredibly, the same indications of collusion in the bidding were evident the second time, so again World Bank objected. A third round of bidding ensued in 2006 with the same results, at which point World Bank – which by now had already notified the DOF and Ombudsman of its investigation – put a stop to the shenanigans, withholding about $33 million of the initial $150 million loan and thus preventing these contracts from being awarded.
As senior undersecretary and chair of the PBAC for Visayas and Mindanao, Bonoan would have certainly known about the cartel, and may have even been a part of it, although the public version of the World Bank integrity report does not name anyone involved, so as not to compromise any investigative action the government might want to take. It is also not clear whether or not Bonoan’s PBAC was responsible for conducting the bidding on the NRIMP projects; they certainly did fall within his normal jurisdiction, but subsequent parts of the NRIMP project, which were implemented after 2011, used a Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC), which might also have been the case in 2001-2006.
Nevertheless, in his particular position as a senior undersecretary with oversight on projects in the Visayas and Mindanao, and with more than 30 years’ experience in the DPWH at that point, there is simply no way that Bonoan, if he was not involved personally, could not have known what was happening with the ‘cartel’ that had been uncovered. That he – or to be fair, no one else in DPWH – did nothing to stop it is obvious from that astonishing fact that even after the DPWH knew World Bank’s integrity people were on to them, the same sort of rigged bidding was carried out again, not once but twice.
And what did the government do about this discovery of organized corruption within DPWH? Apparently nothing; there is no record of any significant investigative or legal action being taken on the matter, and while Sen. Loren Legarda filed a resolution calling for an investigation in the Senate in early 2009, that seems to have come to naught as well. For Bonoan’s part, he was temporarily promoted to officer-in-charge of the DPWH between February and July 2007, filling in for Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., who served a short stint during that time as Defense Secretary. Bonoan eventually retired from DPWH in 2010, right about the time Rogelio Singson –now a member of the ICI – was named secretary by then-president Aquino, and went on to the private sector, until being recalled by President Marcos in 2022. Bonoan’s still-unanswered role in the NRIMP scandal in his previous stint at DPWH was evidently not considered important either by the president or the Commission on Appointments.
Unfortunately for Bonoan, his position at DPWH, both between 2000 and 2007 and from July 2022 until his resignation under a cloud of controversy in August of this year, requires that his guilt or innocence in either scandal be explicitly established. “Presumption of innocence” in the form of just ignoring the open questions is not good enough, especially not with public faith in the government deteriorating as rapidly as it is. Releasing the confidential version of World Bank’s 2007 report would be the right step. The government, however, appears increasingly reluctant to take right steps, so we shall see what happens.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Bluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
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