MANILA, Philippines (AP) 鈥� A Philippine senator said he will surrender to authorities after a special anti-graft court ordered his arrest on Monday on a non-bailable charge of plunder after he allegedly pocketed a huge kickback in a flood-control project in the latest crisis to hit the upper chamber.
The special Sandiganbayan anti-graft court had initially issued a warrant for Sen. Jinggoy Estrada鈥檚 arrest Friday on a graft charge that was bailable. He then surrendered and was released on bail and again denied any wrongdoing.
Estrada, 63, has strongly denied allegations mainly by a former government public works engineer that he received more than 570 million pesos ($9.3 million) in kickbacks from flood control projects.
Before leaving the Senate to surrender, Estrada suggested that the corruption cases he was facing and his arrest were a result of his being aligned with the camp of former President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter, incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte, a former ally but now an arch political rival of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
鈥淚 will not yield to threats. I will not be intimidated,鈥� Estrada said at the Senate.
鈥淚 will not be pressured into surrendering my independence of judgement,鈥� he said.
The senator was an actor like his father, former President Joseph Estrada. Both have been previously detained on other corruption-related charges.
Several other senators and members of the House of Representatives have been implicated in the flood control anomalies in a poverty-stricken Asian archipelago that is among the most vulnerable to deadly floods and typhoons.
With Jinggoy Estrada鈥檚 looming arrest, two senators in the 24-member chamber would now be effectively sidelined by legal troubles.
Another senator, Ronald dela Rosa, has gone into hiding after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest for an alleged crime against humanity.
Dela Rosa was a former national police chief who enforced a brutal anti-drugs crackdown under then-President Rodrigo Duterte that left thousands of mostly low-level suspects dead. The unprecedentedly large numbers of killings alarmed Western governments.
Duterte, who stepped down in 2022 after his stormy six-year term, was arrested last year on orders of the ICC and flown to the Netherlands, where he was detained and will face trial for alleged crimes against humanity starting in November over some of the killings.
Duterte and dela Rosa have denied any wrongdoing but Duterte had repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death.
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