An issuance of a Notice of Disallowance (ND) on any government expense and subsequent order for restitution can not immediately be blocked through a petition submitted to the Supreme Court, a former state auditor said.

Atty. Roderick Wamil, a former state auditor under the Commission on Audit (COA) Intelligence and Confidential Funds Office (ICFAO), explained that while an ND was not “final” and can be questioned to the court, it was still classified as “executory.”

Wamil was confronted with the query through the interjection of senator-judge Imee Marcos during the impeachment trial against Vice President Sara Duterte, seeking to identify if the decisions and notices issued in accordance with the audit findings of COA were conclusive in nature.

In the impeachment, the particular agencies that were questioned were the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) which had allegedly misused confidential funds under the leadership of Duterte from 2022 to 2023.

While DepEd has not been issued a formal order to restitute public funds, the OVP was mandated to return P72.28 million in 2022 and P375 million for 2023.

Since the decision was not inherently final, Marcos then raised a possibility for the order to be raised to the high court so the decision could become absolute.

Wamil, however, underscored that the Supreme Court could not directly halt the ordered restitution of public funds through a petition for certiorari without an issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO).

“I’ll just clarify, when it gets brought to the Supreme Court the only grounds are for grave abuse of discretion amounting to a lot or excess of jurisdiction, so factual matters are not involved,” he explained.

“The decision of the COA to restitute is not affected by a filing to the Supreme Court, so even if they file a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court they still need to return it.”

A petition for certiorari is a legal remedy that a particular party could submit to the high court in order to review a decision that was made by a lower court that an applicant viewed as a constitutional issue.

Neither allowed, nor prohibited

Among the issues that were raised in relation to the Vice President’s alleged misuse of confidential funds was the peculiarity of the names that were indicated in the several acknowledgement receipts (ARs) as recipients of varying amounts.

Although the identities of individuals such as Mary Grace Piattos, Andy Lim, Alejandro Pikit, Nova Santos, and Patty Ting have been questioned both in the Senate and the proceedings under the House of Representatives, Wamil stated that using aliases under ARs were a gray area within the joint circular that the commission followed.

Given the lack of a guideline that makes mention of nicknames, the former state auditor said that the matter was never flagged nor further investigated as the auditing agency was only concerned with inspecting documents such as liquidation reports.