File photo
MANILA, Philippines — The House panel investigating the expenditures of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and Department of Education (DepEd), the latter when it was still headed also by Vice President Sara Duterte, heard new testimonies that raised more questions on how they had used confidential funds.
This was on top of the challenge of verifying the receipts earlier presented by the OVP to explain how it used P125 million in just 11 days in 2022.
In the sixth hearing conducted on the matter by the committee on good government and public accountability, lawmakers tried to piece together where the OVP’s special disbursing officer (SDO), Gina Acosta, could have possibly kept P125 million in confidential funds out of the check she cashed every quarter with a Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) branch on Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong City.
READ: House probe: OVP, DepEd CFs received by same man, different signatures
They also learned that a former SDO, Edward Fajarda, this time of DepEd, managed to go to as many as 26 places around the country supposedly in a single day to give out rewards, pay for information or settle “safe house” rentals using DepEd’s P112.5-million confidential fund.
Despite earlier invitations, Acosta and Fajarda have yet to attend the inquiry, prompting the committee to cite them in contempt and order their arrest.
Jean Abaya, former branch operations officer of LBP Shaw, testified that Acosta made four withdrawals amounting to P125 million between December 2022 and September 2023.
Abaya said Acosta, who came with several companions, carried the money in three or four large gym bags, each containing between P25 million and P30 million.
The LBP officer described the transactions as “unusual” because of the large sums involved.
Over the counter
The cash was released over the counter and no special arrangements were made for its transit, Abaya said after Deputy Majority Leader and Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin asked whether additional security was provided for the withdrawals.
“We have no memorandum of agreement with [OVP] so the cash was only given over the counter,” she added. For the use of an armored vehicle to deliver such huge amounts to clients, a MOA was required, she added.
Another LBP officer, Nenita Camposano of the DepEd branch, recalled that Fajarda used two gym bags in withdrawing P32.5 million each in three quarterly transactions in 2023.
Taking questions from Manila Rep. Joel Chua, the committee chair, OVP administrative and finance services director Rosalynne Sanchez said she was not privy to where Acosta kept the money withdrawn from LBP Shaw. The vault at the OVP cash division was only for petty cash, payroll, and allowances, she added.
She said it was possible that Acosta took the money home or kept it in her office since it was an SDO’s responsibility to keep it safe.
26 locations in a day
Meanwhile, Rep. Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez of the 1-Rider party list wondered how Fajarda managed to travel to 26 places in a day to “personally disburse” confidential funds in the first three quarters of 2023, based on a certification that the DepEd official had submitted to the Commission on Audit (COA).
The lawmaker said that on March 15, 2023, Fajarda “supposedly made 26 disbursements in the following locations: Davao del Sur; Surigao del Sur; Oriental Mindoro; Laguna; Zamboanga del Sur; Cebu; Ifugao; Antique; Batanes; Pampanga; Legazpi City; Lanao del Norte; Batangas; Tarlac; Metro Manila; Samar; Davao de Oro; Agusan del Norte; Cavite; and Surigao del Norte.”
More AR anomalies
“Here, we can see in DepEd [that] it seems to be really an impossibility,” Gutierrez said.
Also in the hearing, Assistant Majority Leader and Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong said the OVP and DepEd submitted nearly 4,500 acknowledgment receipts (ARs) to the COA to explain how they used a total of P612.5 million in confidential funds from the last quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2023.
There were 2,670 ARs from the OVP and 1,820 ARs from DepEd, Adiong said, but many of them had no printed names or only had signatures. Some had names that appear two to three times in receipts coming from both agencies.
One name, “Kokoy Villamin,” appeared in both the OVP and DepEd receipts but had different signatures, he said.
The committee has referred the ARs to the Philippine Statistics Authority to have the names validated. Samples have also been sent to the National Bureau of Investigation to check if the different signatures, based on the handwriting, were actually just made by a single person.