NBI says Defensor offered P5M each to silence ex-Marines on flood control suitcase testimony

The Department of Justice and National Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday, June 4, 2026, on the sidelines of the Cayetano-bloc Senate Blue Ribbon hearing on flood control kickbacks, that the bureau had received information indicating that former Quezon City Representative Michael "Mike" Defensor had offered each of the eighteen ex-Marines testifying P5 million to withdraw their cooperation. NBI investigators framed the lead as an obstruction-of-justice angle running parallel to the underlying flood control plunder track. On Friday, June 5, 2026 the NBI told Inquirer reporters that the bureau had identified six more retired Marines who had been approached, bringing the total said to have been offered the silencing amount to twenty-four. The witnesses themselves are former security personnel for ex-Ako Bicol Party-list Representative Elizaldy "Zaldy" Co, whose December 2025 fugitive declaration by the Sandiganbayan remains in effect. Their sworn testimony placed sixty to seventy cash-filled suitcases per week, each holding P20 million to P70 million, on the Senate record across the 2022 to 2025 period. The NBI lead places Defensor under a second, separate corruption exposure. Defensor is already a co-respondent in the Office of the Ombudsman's plunder and indirect bribery preliminary investigation against Sen. Rodante Marcoleta over P30 million he is alleged to have donated to Marcoleta's May 2025 senatorial campaign without appearing on the senator's Statement of Contributions and Expenditures.