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EJ Macababbad - The Philippine Star
March 14, 2026 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — After months of silence, the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) has announced that it will end its operations on March 31, wrapping up its investigation into anomalous infrastructure projects and turning over all evidence to the ombudsman and the justice department.
There has been a guessing game on whether the ICI would continue its operations after commissioners Rogelio Singson and Rossana Fajardo resigned in December 2025, leaving chairman Andres Reyes Jr. alone to carry out its mandate.
Reyes maintained yesterday that the ICI has already established an investigative framework and developed three information systems to effectively examine and identify irregularities in public works.
“With these frameworks and systems now in place, I believe that the commission has fulfilled its mandate under Executive Order 94, and that the work initiated by the ICI is now properly situated to be carried forward by the agencies established by law,” Reyes, a retired associate justice, said.
“Thus, I hereby recommend that the ICI wind down its operations. The commission will remain operational until March 31, 2026, to complete the necessary administrative processes related to its wind-down,” he announced.
President Marcos has been reviewing the 125-day accomplishment report submitted by the ICI for more than a month, comprising over 1,000 pages. Under the sunset clause of Executive Order 94, the ICI will only be abolished “upon the accomplishment of the purposes for which it was created or unless sooner dissolved by the President.”
By concluding its work, the ICI on Friday handed over all documents and evidence under its possession to Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla.
Copies will be furnished to the Department of Justice and the Department of Public Works and Highways for their records, review and guidance.
The ICI did not provide a complete accounting of the total number of projects it assessed during its six-month run. In October 2025, the fact-finding body was expected to recommend 15 to 20 cases within three weeks, focusing on ghost projects considered “low-hanging fruit.”
Ultimately, it made nine referrals to the ombudsman implicating 65 individuals, including two sitting senators, dozens of House lawmakers and project contractors.
AI for case buildup
With a target of “more than eight” personalities to be indicted, the Office of the Ombudsman vowed it would maximize all its resources, to the point of tapping artificial intelligence to be able to establish cases based on reports from the ICI about the flood control scandal.
The ombudsman has received “200 mega-boxes” of data from ICI that included thousands of documents and hard drives containing vouchers and contracts on anomalous flood control projects, according to Remulla.
The office has decided to use AI to look into voluminous documents from the ICI, he noted. “We’ll be scrutinizing the documents submitted to us by the ICI within the next few days. And this will be very important because with the aid of artificial intelligence, it’s easier to look at this data and to have it organized. And we will be using AI for this purpose,” he explained.
Using AI for case buildup in relation to the flood control mess may help “point out who signed the documents, who signed the checks,” Remulla added.
“We can actually maximize the use of artificial intelligence to go through the facts, to go through the disbursement vouchers... All of it comes into a procedure, the procedure for approving a project, all the way to the implementation. That’s what we want to see,” he added.
Remulla noted that the ICI had invited 13 congressmen to its hearings, and eight were recommended for prosecution. “They only suggested eight to be prosecuted, but we are looking beyond that figure,” he said.
Also included in the ICI investigations were “seven senators” and “no contractors.”
Remulla commended the ICI for “being able to come up with many things that were not in the equation before” within the agency’s 90 days as a collegial body.
Remulla also revealed he has been asking ICI’s legal staff to apply to the ombudsman “so that we will not waste the institutional knowledge that we already have.” — Ghio Ong
