MANILA — Maria Catalina “Cathy” Cabral, one of the former Department of Public Works and Highways executives tagged in the flood control corruption scandal, was found dead on Thursday night after allegedly falling from a cliff along Kennon Road in Tuba town in Benguet
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Who was Maria Catalina Cabral, and how could her death affect the ongoing probe into the country’s biggest corruption scandal?
With a public works career spanning more than 40 years, the 63-year-old Cabral rose from the ranks and was appointed undersecretary for Planning and Public-Private Partnership in 2014 until she resigned from the post this year after she was implicated in the alleged kickback scheme.
She built a stellar career and earned the distinction as a “model for ‘Woman Infrastructure’ in a male-dominated organization.”
A licensed civil engineer with a doctoral degree in Business Management and Public Administration, Cabral made history as the first female rank-and-file employee to reach the level of undersecretary at the DPWH.
She also gained three master’s degrees and certificates from Wharton, Harvard Kennedy School, and Mohamed Bin Zayed University in areas like data analytics, digital transformation, and artificial intelligence.
Before she was installed as undersecretary, she was directly involved in the implementation of major roads, bridges, and flood control projects co-funded by the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and Japan International Cooperation Agency.
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‘CABRAL KNOWS MORE’
But her long and illustrious career came crashing down when she was identified as allegedly having a key role in the pay-off scheme in which she was accused of arranging projects to be inserted in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), the executive department’s proposed national budget.
In one of the hearings of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said Cabral texted a staff member of Senate President Vicente Sotto III to ask if he had any priority projects he wanted to insert in the 2026 NEP of the DPWH.
Lacson said the message was sent after the 2025 midterm polls, an accusation that Cabral denied, according to DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon.
Former DPWH Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo earlier claimed that some funding for infrastructure projects was “cleared” by Cabral and would later be approved by the agency’s secretary.
Bernardo said that Cabral “from time to time” would ask him to submit a detailed list of projects about lump sum fund allocations of DPWH.
Batangas First District Rep. Leandro Leviste, who had met with officials of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure, told ANC in November: “I’m interested to find out what will happen if people call on [former] undersecretary Cabral to share what she has.”
“Because if [former] undersecretary Bernardo is [the] star witness in the Blue Ribbon Committee hearings, the ICI also told me their belief that [ex-] Usec. Cabral knows more than Usec. Bernardo,” he said.
“If she releases her list, then that would be very enlightening on the DPWH probe.”
In a Facebook post on Friday, Leviste said Cabral’s computer had a list of all proponents of DPWH insertions, arguing that the investigations could be concluded if the supposed list comes out.
Four days before her death, the ICI held a hearing into the flood control mess, which Cabral skipped despite being invited.
“We plan to invite former Usec. Cabral and we are hoping that she appears, there are information that the commission would want to get from,” ICI Executive Director Brian Keith Hosaka said, referring to the December 15 hearing.
‘TOTAL CONNIVANCE’
Cabral’s death shocked the public and led to worries that her passing could leave a huge gap in the investigation into the infrastructure anomalies, although authorities rushed to save possible evidence she possessed.
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Congressional hearings revealed that a coordinated scheme involving lawmakers, top executives and aides from the DPWH, and government contractors made the embezzlement possible.
Rogelio Singson, a former DPWH Secretary who joined the ICI and later quit due to stress, last month said their separate probe uncovered “total connivance” between the officials and stressed that the looting of funds was not possible without the role of the DPWH executives.
“It’s a matter of identifying people who were involved in the connivance that really brought this whole government machinery system total breakdown,” Singson said.
“It did not start the last two years. It started way back, started in tiny bits in 2018, started to grow when they perfected the system, [and] it started in tremendous leaps and bounds.”
‘ALLOCABLES’
Amid investigations into the flood control scheme, the controversial “allocables” cropped up.
Allocables are tagged as the new form of pork barrel, but the total amounts are determined by the executive rather than by the lawmakers, who can decide how the funds should be spent, according to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
A so-called “BBM (Baselined, Balanced and Managed) Parametric Formula” supposedly determined the allocable amounts. Cabral invented the formula for it and was allegedly the only one who understood it, the outlet said.
According to a document obtained by the PCIJ, the “BBM Parametric Formula” has guided the agency’s budget since 2023, noting that it was the first year the Marcos administration had enacted a national budget.
“BBM” is the popular nickname of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
In a November report, the PCIJ tagged Ilocos Norte 1st District Rep. Sandro Marcos and Leyte 1st District Rep. Martin Romualdez as “pork barrel kings.”
Specifically, the investigative outlet said that President Marcos’ son, Sandro, was allotted P15.8 billion, while his cousin Romualdez, a former House Speaker, had P14.4 billion in allocables for the past three years.
With Cabral’s death, many questions could be left unanswered.
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