House open to reviewing OP’s secret funds

The House of Representatives is open to investigating the confidential expenditures of the Office of the President (OP) — the top spender of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) in 2023 — if a lawmaker will initiate it, a minority lawmaker said Wednesday.

“If someone makes a privilege speech or files a resolution regarding the [confidential funds of the] President, if it is found to be used for matters not related to their functions, then I think the [House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability] with take the matter up,” 1-Rider Rep. Ramon Gutierrez told reporters.

His pronouncement follows the report of the Commission on Audit (CoA) that revealed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s office spent a whopping P4.57 billion in CIF last year, making it the major spender among all government agencies, surpassing security and intel units such as the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (P127.41 million) and National Security Council (P90 million), among others.

The audit showed the OP spent P2.2 billion on confidential expenses, P2.3 billion on intelligence, and more than P10 million on extraordinary and miscellaneous expenses. The P4.57 billion CIF in 2023 was slightly higher than the P4.51 billion in 2022.

CIFs are earmarked for surveillance and intelligence activities. Agencies responsible for this receive their respective portions annually. However, through the years, CIFs became a tradition in the budget system, with civilian agencies that have nothing to do with surveillance jumping on the bandwagon.

But this was not the case with Marcos, according to panel chairperson Joel Chua.

“Well, the Office of the President is a different matter. Because our President has a job and an obligation as the commander in chief of the armed forces of our country and it concerns national security,” he said in the same briefing.

Gutierrez highlighted that Marcos’s office spending was far different from Vice President Sara Duterte’s, which has been flagged by the CoA.

“There was no notice of disallowance in the OP and that’s why no one has filed any privilege speech or resolution. In the OVP (Office of the Vice President) there was a notice of disallowance. So perhaps that’s one difference,” he said.

Duterte has been at the center of intense scrutiny amid allegations that she misappropriated P612.5 million in confidential funds allocated to the OVP (P500 million) and the Department of Education (P112.5 million) in 2022 and 2023.

State auditors flagged a significant portion of the funds and disallowed P73.287 million of the P125 million that the OVP spent in merely 11 days in the last quarter of 2022, Duterte’s first year in office.

The House probe unearthed severe anomalies in the use of the confidential funds, such as its potential abuse and misappropriation due to the lack of oversight, prompting lawmakers to implement safeguards.