The House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability will coordinate with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to identify Mary Grace Piattos, one of the alleged fictitious recipients of the multi-million confidential funds of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) in 2022.
Panel chairperson Joel Chua told reporters on Tuesday that apart from eyeing assistance from the PSA, they are also “considering the penmanships to be submitted to the experts.”
“Yes, definitely we will coordinate… But we are still looking at the other names if there are [fictitious] also being mentioned… We saw a lot of problems and that's just one of it,” he said in a briefing one day prior to the continuation of the probe into the alleged fund misuse by Vice President Sara Duterte’s office.
The panel along with the House quad committee has raised a P1 million bounty for anyone who can provide leads about Piattos.
Chua is keen that the acknowledgment receipts (ARs) submitted by the OVP to the Commission on Audit (CoA) to justify the use of P612.5 confidential funds that Duterte received in 2022 and 2023 are “highly suspicious.”
House lawmakers have attributed this to the “spurious” ARs with identical ink signatures, incorrect dates, some unsigned, some had missing names, and mostly, some bore fictitious names, such as that of Piattos.
They suspect that the name Mary Grace Piattos, who allegedly received the biggest chuck of Duterte’s secret funds, might be a combination of a popular local restaurant café and a brand of potato chips.
Piattos was only one of the many supposed recipients of the confidential funds, having signed an AR dated 30 December 2022. The amount she obtained, however, was yet to be disclosed.
According to Chua, the documents are likely fabricated or rushedly submitted to the state auditors in an effort to justify the use of the multi-million secret funds.
“Our theory is that those acknowledgment receipts were only made when CoA issued the AOM or the audit observation memo. So, because they were confused to justify their liquidation, they produced a pile of acknowledgment receipts,” he asserted.
“But because of the volume [of the ARs they have to produce] to justify the P125 million, there is 60K, there is 40K, there is 400K, there are different amounts [and] dates involved, perhaps they overlooked it,” the chairman narrated.
The P125 million was the confidential funds that Duterte received in 2022 and spent for merely 11 days in December of that year.
Of the sum, P73.287 million was disallowed by CoA due to the lack of "documents evidencing the success of information gathering and/or surveillance activities" for which the funds were allegedly used.
The P125 million was part of the P221.42 million contingent fund of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s office diverted to Duterte's office as secret funds.
Opposition lawmakers earlier insinuated that the transfer was unconstitutional since there was no line item for it in the 2022 General Appropriations Act.
Chua's panel will resume its probe today, Wednesday, expecting Duterte's attendance. The VP, who has maintained that she never misused her funds, remains steadfast in her refusal to attend the congressional probe, which she claims is aimed at impeaching her.