2023 AARs out December 2024

Have faith in the forecast of Jesus alone. He is always right.

Why worry about Nostradamus, he died over 400 years ago. His forecast that Biden will win is wrong again, Biden is quitting.

Commission on Audit (CoA) chairperson Gamaliel A. Cordoba issued Memorandum 2024-008 on 15 July 2024 to harmonize and rationalize the deadline set for the publication of annual audit reports or AARs.

The memorandum was issued under Section 99 of the General Provisions, General Appropriations Act (GAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 mandating the CoA chief and the Commission’s web administrator to ensure that the AARs are posted on the CoA website together with the corresponding status reports on the action taken as submitted by the agencies before the end of the succeeding fiscal year; and that CoA shall issue a disclaimer that a particular audit observation is not yet final.

The legislation and CoA action were in response to the statement of Ombudsman Samuel Martires that he would want state auditors to keep findings private on 12 September 2023, when he asked Congress to strike off budget audit annual reports and not the audit observation memorandum.

That day, the Ombudsman cried foul over the publication of the initial CoA’s audit observation memorandum.

The following day he issued a press statement: “The Office of the Ombudsman would prefer to work quietly and away from the limelight, particularly when the reputation of people in the government is concerned. After all, we still operate under the Constitutional presumption of innocence and the statutory presumption that official functions are regularly performed.”

That was the statement made by Ombudsman Samuel Martires about the AAR posted by the Commission on Audit on its website.

The AAR contains the various observations of the CoA concerning its inquiry into the budget utilization of the Department of Health (DoH) for fiscal year 2020.

He revealed that he ordered, motu propio, and as early as June 2020, the investigation relative to the procurement of test kits, PPE, and other emergency purchases; including the non-payment to “fallen health workers” and those infected by the virus; as well as the lapses and inefficiencies that led to the rising number of deaths and infected medical frontlines.

The investigation already resulted in the preventive suspension of at least five DoH officials sometime in October 2020.”

Our next step will be to review the CoA report and compare this with the findings to determine the existence of administrative or criminal liability about the financial transactions at the DoH.

The Ombudsman stressed that their investigation was also focused on determining the causes of inefficiency or mismanagement and identifying areas prone to corruption, the results of which will be communicated to the agency concerned and to Congress for appropriate legislation, if necessary.

Former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales pointed to a 2017 CoA-OMB Memorandum of Agreement that created a task force composed of CoA auditors and Ombudsman investigators to automatically investigate audit observations tagged by the CoA.

The Ombudsman said he apologized to former Ombudsman, Justice Conchita Carpio Morales for not informing her that he deactivated the task force because he noted some legal infirmities.”

Martires was referring to the anti-graft and malversation cases filed by former Ombudsman Carpio Morales based on an Audit Observation Memorandum of the CoA. When the cases against former Congressman Echeverri, et al. were filed, the audit process has not yet been completed.

The accused appealed the audit observations to the Commission en banc, which overturned the findings of the auditors.

Meanwhile, the OMB criminal cases pending with the Sandiganbayan reached the Supreme Court which, based on the decision of the Commission Proper, dismissed the cases. This forced the prosecutors of the Office of the Ombudsman to withdraw the other cases against Echiverri, et al.