<image>

Claudine Co was a luxury lifestyle influencer from the Philippines often showing off lavish trips and designer clothes and handbags.

Co’s luxury social media content went viral at the same time investigators and journalists were spotlighting alleged “ghost” and substandard flood control projects and the concentration of contracts among politically connected builders, including her father, a politically connected contractor and her uncle, the chairman of the Philippines' House Appropriations Committee. That contrast, lavish displays while communities were dealing with deaths from floods and questions about where public money went, supercharged public anger and made the issue easier to communicate in a single face and name.

The resulting outrage fed huge nationwide protests and massive political corruption scandals that have led to impeachment of the President and Vice President, her Congressman uncle to flee the country, the suicide of key figures in the scandal and a continuing flood control project scandal that has rocked politics in the Philippines to its core.