A list is presented to the politician (Mayor, Congressman, Senator, etc) containing projects and beside each items are amounts that they can make (err steal through overpricing and misdeclarations) from those projects (road construction, civic structures, education textbooks, etc).

For road constructions, as an example, the width of the road is reduced by a couple of inches. Nobody would notice but the savings are ginormous. Guess where the money goes? Partly to the politician and to the contractor as well. How much more if the politician is the contractor who won the project without public bidding? (Politicians with businesses).

A mayor of a city / town somewhere in Bicol once told us even senators themselves sell projects. Of course he was offered once. We could not – or did not have time to – react.

This is what they call institutionalized corruption. Most politicians, if not all, hide business transactions under government projects.

There are no paper trails. They are too smart for that. Even CoA is helpless (or some insiders are cohorts).

Even in the private sector. A bookkeeper once commented that the use of company finances (dinner with a family) can be disguised under “a dinner meeting with a potential client / business investor”. Prove otherwise.