Ortega: VP fund recipients like grocery list
The supposed recipients of the P500-million confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) are starting to appear like items in a grocery list, House Deputy Majority Leader Francisco Paolo Ortega V said, as he found more bizarre names of purported beneficiaries with no birth records.
The La Union congressman cited “Beverly Claire Pampano,” “Mico P. Harina,” “Patty Ting,” “Ralph Josh Bacon” and “Sala Casim” as members of “Team Grocery.”
Ortega explained that “Pampano” was a type of fish, “Harina” was flour in Tagalog, while “Casim” or “kasim” was a triangular cut of pork shoulder commonly used in adobo or menudo.
He said that, like other previous names found in his continuing review of evidence on the alleged misuse by Vice President Sara Duterte of her confidential funds, the new names had no birth, marital or death records with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
“The new names we saw look like they belong to a list of items to be bought from a market or grocery,” Ortega pointed out in Filipino.
‘Lasaña,’ ‘Origano’
He noted that the “Team Grocery” names were among those in acknowledgment receipts submitted by the OVP to the Commission on Audit (COA) to justify its spending of P500 million in confidential funds.
Other names of supposed recipients that resembled food brands or products and similarly had no corresponding PSA records include Cannor Adrian Contis, Claire Nikka Lasaña, Kikoy Origano and Mathew N. Keso.
Previously, Ortega had cited the discovery of other strange names among recipients of the OVP’s confidential funds, which were seemingly derived from snack brands and gadgets, such as Mary Grace Piattos’ apparent relatives Pia Piatos-Lim and Renan Piatos; Xiamo Ocho; Miggy Mango; and Jay Kamote. He also found five “Dodongs”: Dodong S. Barok, Dodong Alcala, Dodong Bina, Dodong Bunal and Dodong Darong.
They were part of nearly 2,000 names in acknowledgment receipts submitted by the OVP to the COA but, upon verification by the House committee on good government and public accountability, the PSA said that 1,322 of the names had no birth records.
“What’s sad is the strange names continue to increase in number … There seems to be an effort to fabricate names in the list to cover up where the funds went,” Ortega said.
