The head of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability said on Tuesday that they will coordinate with the Philippine Statistics Authority 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.
Rep. Joel Chua told reporters that, apart from seeking 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 ones] also being mentioned… We saw a lot of problems, and that’s just one of them,” 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 remarked that the acknowledgment receipts (ARs) submitted by the OVP to the Commission on Audit to justify the use of P612.5 million in 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 missing names and, mostly, some bearing fictitious names, such as that of Piattos.
They suspect that the name Mary Grace Piattos, who allegedly received the biggest chunk of Duterte’s secret funds, might be a combination of the names of a popular local restaurant café and a potato chips brand.