OVP fund recipients have names resembling groceries: Harina, Bacon
黑料社 FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — This time, House lawmakers found names resembling groceries on the list of recipients of the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) confidential funds (CFs).
House Deputy Majority Leader Paolo Ortega V of La Union said on Sunday that the newly discovered names, dubbed “Team Grocery,” further raised allegations that large sums of public money were allegedly funneled to fictitious individuals.
Below is the new list of questionable names that Ortega said have no official birth, marriage, or death records from the Philippine Statistics Authority:
- Beverly Claire Pampano, whose surname resembles a popular fish
- Mico Harina, whose surname translates to flour
- Sala Casim, whose surname is a homophone of “kasim,” a pork shoulder cut widely used in Filipino dishes like adobo and menudo
- Patty Ting, whose first name means a small flat cake of minced meat.
- Ralph Josh Bacon, whose last name resembles a cured and smoked pork
Ortega said the office of Vice President Sara Duterte submitted these names to the Commission on Audit.
“The new names we found look like a shopping list for the market or grocery,” Ortega said in Filipino.
“If they are not real people, where did the funds go?” he asked.
READ: Duterte-led DepEd’s secret fund receipts have ‘odor’ names – lawmaker
This was not the first time that lawmakers found odd names on the list of recipients of the OVP and the Duterte-led Department of Education’s combined P612.5-million CFs.
CF recipients bearing the names “Mary Grace Piattos,” “Renan Piatos,” “Pia Piatos-Lim,” “Xiaome Ocho,” “Jay Kamote,” “Miggy Mango,” “Amoy Liu,” “Fernan Amuy,” and “Joug De Asim” were also flagged in the previous weeks.
“What’s even more concerning is that the list keeps growing. Is this just a typo? It seems like there’s a deliberate effort to fabricate names to cover up where the funds were spent,” Ortega said in Filipino.
READ: More food names found on OVP secret fund receipts: Kamote, Mango
Ortega also noted that out of 1,992 supposed recipients of the OVP’s CF, 1,322 had no birth records, 1,456 had no marriage records, and 1,593 had no death records.
Meanwhile, Manila Rep. Joel Chua, chair of the House committee on good government and public accountability, revealed earlier that 405 out of the 677 names listed as beneficiaries of DepEd’s CFs have no birth records, an indication that the names were allegedly fabricated.
