DOJ payroll officer faces theft, graft raps for diverting funds
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday vowed to tighten its internal measures after one of its payroll officers was arrested for allegedly diverting millions of pesos in public funds to new bank accounts he had opened.
DOJ spokesperson Raphael Niccolo Martinez said the justice department “takes very seriously” the arrest of one of its employees. He added that the DOJ would extend its full cooperation to the National Bureau of Investigation and other authorities in pursuing the case.
“The DOJ remains committed to transparency, accountability, and the protection of public resources, and will continue to strengthen internal controls to ensure that a similar situation does not occur in the future,” Martinez said in a statement.
He did not identify the employee involved, although NBI spokesperson Palmer Mallari earlier said in an ABS-CBN interview that the DOJ staff member was an administrative officer assigned to handle the payroll of regional prosecutors.
The suspect allegedly reinstated the payroll accounts of resigned and retired regional prosecutors and transferred the benefits credited to those accounts to new bank accounts he had opened.
The DOJ employee is facing charges of malversation of public funds, qualified theft, violations of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, the Access Devices Regulation Act, computer-related fraud and forgery, and the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act.
