The Bersamin Guide to Wealth: How to Acquire Mansions on a Government Salary and Still Play the Victim

Foreword by Ping Lacson: “There Is No Evidence” – The Magic Words That Pay for Everyone’s Yachts

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — November 26, 2025

Act I: The Greatest Magical Disappearance Since David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Vanish

Welcome to the 2025 Malacañang Magic Show.
The trick: making P100 billion in budget insertions appear out of nowhere, then making all accountability vanish with the magic words “no evidence.”
The volunteer assistants who suddenly resigned? Mere stagehands sacrificed so the star illusionists – President Marcos and former Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin – can bow to thunderous applause while the audience forgets the money ever existed.

Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, our newly-minted high priest of due process, solemnly assures the nation on radio that there is absolutely “no evidence” linking the President or Bersamin to kickbacks.
Translation: move along, nothing to see here, just P100 billion in flood-control projects that somehow never control floods.

**Come for the magic, stay for the mildew—RA 1379 tickets sold out… forever.**

Act II: Ping Lacson, Suddenly the Patron Saint of Hearsay Rules

Remember when Ping Lacson used to chase criminals with nothing more than a hunch and a ledger?
Those days are apparently dead. Today he clutches the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure like a rosary and demands “direct testimony or documentary evidence” before anyone dares implicate the powerful.

Funny how the man who once exposed the Jose Pidal accounts with bank records alone now needs a notarized confession signed in triplicate before he’ll believe two undersecretaries were name-dropping the President like it was a buy-one-take-one promo at the national treasury.

Act III: Lucas Bersamin and the Magical Defense Called “Triple Hearsay”

Former Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin – yes, the same man who used to lecture the nation about the rule of law – now hides behind the phrase “triple hearsay” with the enthusiasm of a first-year law student who just discovered the Rules of Evidence.

Your Honor, with all due respect: the Supreme Court already ruled in Estrada v. Ombudsman (G.R. Nos. 212140-41, 2015) that hearsay is admissible to establish probable cause. But please, keep performing. The “I was pushed, I didn’t resign” routine is Oscar-worthy.

Act IV: RA 1379 – The Nuclear Option Everyone Pretends Doesn’t Exist

While everyone obsesses over the slow, painful criminal routes – Republic Act No. 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act), Republic Act No. 7080 (Plunder Law) – there exists a far more elegant guillotine: Republic Act No. 1379 (An Act Declaring Forfeiture in Favor of the State Any Property Found to Have Been Unlawfully Acquired).

Let us break it down for the cheap seats:

Wealth manifestly out of proportion to salary → prima facie presumption it was stolen.
Burden shifts to the official to prove lawful acquisition.
Standard of proof? Preponderance of evidence, not beyond reasonable doubt.
Nature of case? Civil. No jail, but total asset forfeiture.

So, Solicitor General Darlene Marie Berberabe, the floor is yours.
File the petition.
Force Bersamin to explain in open court how a public servant’s salary bought all those unexplained properties.
I triple-dog-dare you.

Act V: Endgame – Who Moves, Who Bleeds, Who Gets Away

Lacson’s choices:

Keep the “see-no-evil” performance going, or
Actually subpoena the bank records and turn hearsay into testimony – but that might collapse the entire illusion.

Bersamin’s choices:

Retire quietly as the designated fall guy, or
Fight an RA 1379 case and watch every unexplained mansion get paraded on national television.

Malacañang’s choices:

Throw more undersecretaries under the bus and call it “cleansing,” or
Pretend this isn’t the same DPWH flood-control racket that’s been running since the martial-law era.

The consequences are already here: classrooms unbuilt, flood walls unraised, investors running, and a nation that now believes “no evidence” is just Tagalog for “we got away with it again.”

Final Curtain: Stop Clapping for the Illusionists – Burn the Stage Down

To the Solicitor General:

File the RA 1379 petition tomorrow. Let the courts decide if Bersamin’s wealth is ill-gotten.

To the Ombudsman:

Kindly consider wrapping up the legendary “preliminary investigation” marathon sometime this decade. Dust off those contempt powers so generously granted by Republic Act No. 6770 (Ombudsman Act of 1989) and subpoena the bank records before the trail gets any colder. The nation would be ever so grateful.

To the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee:

Hold public hearings. Put Zaldy Co, Trygve Olaivar, Adrian Bersamin, and every contractor under oath. Or just admit the committee exists only for press conferences.

To the Filipino people:

The evidence is the missing flood walls.
The evidence is the P100 billion that vanished.
The evidence is every resignation that happened only when the cameras turned on.

Demand the books be opened.
Demand RA 1379 be used for what it was designed for.
Because if this farce ends with another round of musical chairs, the crocodiles win again – and the next flood will be on us.

— Still refusing to blink.