Impeachment prosecutors to VP Sara: reveal actual recipients of P612.5 million in confi funds
Administration lawmakers on Monday called on impeached Vice President Sara Duterte to provide a complete and verifiable list of the actual recipients of some P612.5 million of her office’s and the Department of Education’s (DepEd) confidential funds.
Impeachment prosecutor Joel Chua and Deputy Majority Leader Francisco Paolo Ortega V asserted that Filipinos deserve the truth about where public funds went.
They pointed out that Duterte’s silence on some 1,700 apparently non-existent confidential fund beneficiaries only further bolstered the impeachment case against her.
Over 1,700 of the 2,500 supposed confidential funds beneficiaries of the Office of the Vice President and Deped’s confidential funds have no birth, marital, or death records with the Philippine Statistics Authority.
The names of the beneficiaries resemble snack and gadget brands such as Mary Grace Piattos and Xiaome Ocho.
The names were on thousands of acknowledgment receipts, placed inside sealed envelopes for the recipients’ security. These receipts were submitted by the OVP and Deped to the Commission on Audit to justify their spending.
There were also 158 deficient acknowledgment receipts for expenditures totaling P23.8 million where instead of December, 2022, the supposed recipients wrote December 2023, which corresponded to a period when the OVP had no confidential fund.
Of the P612.5 million in confidential funds, P500 million was the OVP’s from the last quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2023 while P112.5 million was the Deped’s from the first to third quarter of 2023.
Chua, a Manila representative and impeachment prosecutor, said, “The Filipino people deserve to know where their money went. Transparency is not optional. It is a fundamental obligation of public service.”
According to him, the lack of transparency and the suspicious names in the acknowledgment receipts suggested a cover-up in the transactions.
La Union’s Ortega recently observed that Mary Grace Piattos ”relatives,” Pia Piatos-Lim and Renan Piatos, were among the supposed beneficiaries of the OVP’s confidential funds.
He also pointed out that the Xiaome Ocho resembled a smartphone model from 2018.
Chua pointed out that the names, like Piattos’, had no PSA records, adding, ‘Were these real people or were they fabricated to justify fund disbursements?’
“If these names are fabrications, then where did the money go? Who pocketed it?” the lawmaker emphasized.
For Ortega, “If there is no clear list of beneficiaries, it only strengthens the case for impeachment. We cannot allow public funds to be disbursed without proper accountability.”
He added that Duterte’s failure to properly account for the funds was a direct insult to taxpayers, making it necessary for the impeachment proceedings to immediately proceed.
“The public will not tolerate corruption at this scale. If there are no real beneficiaries, then this was a massive, organized plunder of public funds,” Ortega stressed.
