Ortega: Names in Sara Duterte secret funds show 鈥榤astery of system鈥�
Vice President Sara Duterte.
Inquirer Photo/ GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
MANILA, Philippines — Having weird names to certify receipt of confidential fund (CF) disbursements from Vice President Sara Duterte’s offices may be an indication that there is a template on how to manage these allocations, La Union 1st District Rep. Paolo Ortega V said on Monday.
Ortega in a press briefing at the Batasang Pambansa was asked as to what might have been the mindset behind the use of peculiar names on the acknowledgement receipts (ARs) of both the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd).
The lawmaker did not give a specific answer, but he said it shows that people in the offices are familiar or have mastered a system on how to manipulate the funds.
“Well, I think they are already accustomed to this process. They knew how to run this system, more specifically about the confidential funds,” Ortega said in Filipino.
“Whether they intended to use these names or not, they really knew what to do. That’s my opinion about this, there is a mastery of this system already.” he added.
Proof of payment
ARs are proof of payment, or that funding for projects reached its intended beneficiaries — and in the case of OVP and DepEd, some of these are informants who provided confidential information to officials. This is required by the Commission on Audit especially for payees that are not business entities.
But both agencies, including DepEd who used to be under Duterte, came under fire after hearings of the House of Representatives’ committee on good government and public accountability revealed issues in disbursement.
Antipolo City 2nd District Rep. Romeo Acop first noticed that one of the individuals who signed the ARs was named Mary Grace Piattos — a name similar to a restaurant and a potato chip who signed off an AR from the OVP.
Later on, Lanao del Sur 1st District Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong showed two ARs — one for OVP and another for DepEd — which were both received by a certain Kokoy Villamin. However, the signatures and handwriting used by the Villamin in the two documents differed.
READ: House probe: OVP, DepEd CFs received by same man, different signatures
Piattos and Villamin
Both names — Piattos and Villamin — were also not present in the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) registry for live birth, death, and marriage.
On Sunday, Ortega released the most-recent batch of weird names in ARs — including multiple “Fionas” which refers to a character from fantasy film Shrek; a “Magellan”, which refers to Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan who landed in Leyte in 1521; and another individual with the surname “Ewan”, which is a Filipino slang for ‘I don’t know.’
READ: ‘Magellan,’ ‘Fiona’ found on list of VP Duterte secret fund recipients /2050418/magellan-fiona-found-on-list-of-vp-duterte-secret-fund-recipients
Previously, Ortega also released a set of names said to be from a grocery shopping list, while there were some names that sounded like a phone brand — Xiaome Ocho.
READ: Piattos’ kin, ‘Xiaome Ocho’ also got VP Sara Duterte’s funds – Ortega
Ortega also said that the House is also looking to shift its attention from the alleged fake names towards the legitimate personalities that signed ARs.
OVP and DepEd
According to Ortega, aside from the allegedly fictitious personalities, there are also over 600 individuals whose identities exist within the PSA database — which means the next step is to check if they really got the CF allocations from OVP and DepEd.
Duterte was impeached by the House last February 5, after 215 lawmakers filed and verified a fourth impeachment complaint, hinged on these allegations of CF misuse within her offices, and threats to ranking officials including President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The articles of impeachment were immediately transmitted to the Senate, as the 1987 Constitution requires a trial to start forthwith if at least one-thirds of all House members — in this case, 102 out of 306 — have signed and endorsed the petition.
Under the Constitution, the Senate will act as an impeachment court with sitting senators being judges.
However, trial has yet to start as the articles of impeachment were not forwarded to the Senate plenary before session ended on February 5 — which means that Congress would have to reconvene first after the election season, or through a special session to discuss the matter.
