(UPDATE) MALACAÑANG dismissed as “hearsay” claims that some Cabinet secretaries were among the proponents of the multibillion-peso budget insertions for infrastructure projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). Palace Press Officer Claire Castro issued the statement after Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste alleged that the late DPWH undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral had given him documents on Sept. 4 containing the names of high-ranking officials, including Cabinet secretaries, who were in the list of proponents involved in the agency’s budget insertions. “The Palace will only respond to documents authenticated by the DPWH,” Castro said in a statement. “Other than these, they will all be considered hearsay or tsismis, which have no probative value.” Leviste made the claim following the death of Cabral, who was implicated in the insertions controversy and reportedly fell from a cliff along Kennon Road on Dec. 19. In a Facebook post on Sunday, Leviste said the files were shown to the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) on Nov. 18 and 19, and to the Office of the Ombudsman on Nov. 26. He said a summary file contains the “allocable” or the budget allocated to DPWH projects in certain districts, totaling to P401.3 billion. This supposedly increased to P1.041 trillion because of the “outside allocable,” he said. “The release of the files would have wide-ranging consequences,” Leviste said. “They list proponents of flood control and other DPWH projects from the whole government.” To avoid compromising his legislative work, “I would prefer that DPWH be the one to decide on releasing these files to the public,” he said.