Vice President Sara Duterte (Facebook)

The House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability speculated that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) under Sara Duterte rushed to correct the liquidation documents, resulting in “overliquidation » rather amusingly of 23.8 million pesos in confidential funds via there were allegedly 158 “false and misleading” receipts.

Committee Chairman Manila 3rd District Rep. Joel Chua raised this issue during the panel’s recent hearing last November 5 on the alleged misuse of secret funds of the OVP and the Department of Education (DepEd) under Duterte.

“So what are you saying is that they (OVP) exceeded their liquidation reports?” Chua asked 1-Rider Party Rep. Rodge Gutierrez about his discovery of the agency’s 158 questionable gaps in documentation.

“Your guess is as good as ours.” It could also be that these ARs (acknowledgments of receipt) were prepared late,” observed Gutierrez, a lawyer by profession, pointing out that the liquidation documents indicated a date of December 2023, even though no confidential funds had been disbursed during this period.

In total, the OVP submitted 158 acknowledgments of receipt regarding various transactions to the Commission on Audit (COA).

“If 158 people made the same mistake, is that something that would be acceptable? Is this an acceptable margin of error for the COA? » asked Gutiérrez. “These are clear red flags regarding the ARs submitted by the ÖVP, and this is something we should consider (legislating). »

No less than COA official Gloria Camora admitted before the committee that there may have been “inadvertent and typographical errors” made by OVP staff, where she also confirmed that no CIF had not been published in the third quarter of 2023, thus negating the need for RA.

“One of the findings of the COA suspension notice is that some ARs were dated December 2023, and some were not even dated. They (OVP) said they inadvertently contained clerical or typographical errors indicating 2023 instead of 2022,” she conceded.

But Gutierrez wasn’t convinced, pointing out the “red flags” it raised, as they felt the ARs were “false and bogus” to say the least.

“You didn’t find that strange?” “It’s not really strange: it’s totally wrong to justify spending for 2022, but the date is 2023,” he said.

To further prove his point, the lawmaker – one of the “Young Guns” members of the House – even showed ARs dated November 2022, when in reality, the confidential and intelligence funds have only been disbursed only one month later (December 2022). where the OVP spent 125 million pesos in just 11 days.

There were also ARs bearing not only similar scripts and the same ink color in a common pattern, but also having the same set of signatories such as a certain “AAS” and “JOV” who received a total of 280,000 P and P920,000 “purchase of information”, respectively, allegedly in December 2022.

There were a total of 776 ARs, of which 302 had “illegible names” with five “repeated names”.

Mary Grace, Piattos

Antipolo City 2nd District Rep. Romeo Acop asked Camora, who heads the COA’s Confidential Information and Funds Audit Office (ICFAO), if she knew of a famous restaurant named “Mary Grace” and “Piattos” chips, since an AR had the same name, with Piattos as the last name.

For one outage, “AAS” received a total windfall of P280,000 – P60,000 in December 2022, P150,000 in February 2023, and P70,000 in the third quarter of the same year.

But “JOV” was much luckier with almost a million pesos (P920,000) since his first AR for “reward payment” indicated P170,000, followed by P250,000 for vague “supplies” and the last was the most substantial. , P500,000 for “medical and food aid.”

“It’s more likely that it’s the same mistake made by maybe a few people.” Which raises the question: are these ARs fallacious? Are they fake? Are they fake? » asked Gutiérrez.

“We want to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” There must be accountability on this subject,” he added.