MANILA, Philippines – Former speaker Martin Romualdez has been barred from leaving the country after the Sandiganbayan approved the Office of the Ombudsman’s request for the issuance of a precautionary hold departure order (PHDO).

The anti-graft court’s 7th Division approved the PHDO request on Wednesday, April 22, after conducting a summary hearing also on Wednesday, a high-level source told Rappler.

On Wednesday morning, Romualdez’s staff had said he was still in the country. This means the PHDO could still be invoked and prevent the former speaker from flying overseas.

A PHDO is a relatively new mechanism that allows prosecutors to ask for a hold departure order (HDO) even if the investigation is at the complaint level only.

The former speaker was granted a travel clearance on April 20 to travel overseas for his angioplasty surgery. His supposed travel period was from April 20 to May 4, but the Ombudsman had only requested a PHDO on April 21.

Romualdez is facing complaints before the Ombudsman for plunder, graft, money laundering, and direct and indirect bribery. The legal actions are still at the preliminary investigation level — after months of investigation, which means Romualdez has yet to be indicted and charged in court.

The Ombudsman is alleging that Romualdez was the “purported mastermind” behind the kickback scheme tied to ghost flood control projects, which supposedly reached P56 billion.

A Rappler investigation also revealed there were three multimillion-peso properties linked to Romualdez, including a P445-million mansion in Sotogrande, Spain. Another probe unveiled that Malaysian shareholders are also allegedly connected to the multimillion-euro Spanish property.

On Tuesday, Romualdez released a video statement, where he denied masterminding the alleged kickback scheme, claiming that the national budget process is done not by the House speaker alone but by the entire House, the Senate, and the executive branch. – Rappler.com