New bogus OVP confi funds recipients bared

New findings on additional “bogus” recipients of the confidential funds of Vice President Sara Duterte’s office have further strengthened the impeachment case against her, increasing the chances of securing a conviction in the Senate, administration lawmakers said Friday.

Recent verification by the Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that apart from Mary Grace Piattos, three new names surfaced — Pia Piatos-Lim, Renan Piatos and Xiaome Ocho — which House members deemed obviously “fictitious.”

The PSA earlier confirmed that of the 1,992 individuals who allegedly received P500 million in confidential funds from the OVP in 2023, nearly two-thirds or 1,322 had no records of birth.

Meanwhile, only 670 had “mostly likely” matches in the PSA database.

“It only shows that around 1,300 — the highest possibility — of these are also fictitious names,” said Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro, a member of the House prosecution panel, in an interview.

She labeled it as a “clear case of falsification of a document, making it appear that somebody received [a] certain amount of money when in fact these personalities [are] fictitious.”

La Union Rep. Paolo Ortega V believed the irregularities in the transactions are solid evidence against Duterte in her looming impeachment trial in the Senate.

“It’s the same premise as Mary Grace Piattos; they are also part of the Piattos family — Renan, Pia Piatos and Xiaome. They are in the same situation of names without personalities,” Ortega told reporters in English and Filipino in a virtual press conference.

Alleged irrgularities

Lawmakers have since flagged the acknowledgment receipts (ARs) submitted by Duterte’s office to the Commission on Audit, citing alleged irregularities such as the lack of names and signatures, with some having unreadable names, while others bearing the same name.

They suspected that the ARs were fabricated or hastily prepared to justify the expenditure of the multi-million-peso confidential funds.

Zambales Rep. Jefferson Khonghun said the use of fictitious names was clearly an “abuse” of the confidential nature of the funds.

Meanwhile, Luistro asserted that Duterte’s camp cannot feign ignorance of the glaring disparities in the ARs.

“Why does the document not reflect the identity of these recipients? If the recipients are fictitious, it only showed that they falsified the acknowledgment receipts and the other supporting documents of the confidential funds of the OVP,” Luistro said.

The House of Representatives impeached Duterte on 5 February with an overwhelming 215 lawmakers, or more than twice the required one-third signatories voting to endorse the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

The lower chamber outlined seven impeachable offenses against the VP, including her alleged plot against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Marcos, and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, as well as her purported misappropriation of P612.5 million in confidential funds allocated to her office and the Department of Education during her tenure as its secretary.