COA upholds disallowance of P73.29 million OVP secret funds

The photo of the Commission on Audit's office in Quezon City.

The STAR / Michael Varcas

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Audit has affirmed with finality the disallowance against the Office of the Vice President (OVP)’s P73.29 million in confidential funds that were spent in just 11 days in December 2022.

In a 15-page decision dated Oct. 5, the COA denied for lack of merit the motion for reconsideration filed by Vice President Sara Duterte, special disbursing officer Gina Acosta and OVP chief accountant Julieta Villadelrey.

It upheld its April 10 ruling that affirmed the notice of disallowance issued by the COA Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office on Aug. 8, 2024.

“The office has already anticipated the possibility of this decision and has prepared to respond through the appropriate legal and institutional channels,” the OVP said.

The OVP, however, said it has yet to receive a copy of the Oct. 5 COA resolution.

The notice covered expenses made from Dec. 21 to 31, 2022, from the total of P125-million confidential funds that the OVP received on Dec. 20 that year.

The disallowed amount included P69.787 million in rewards and P3.5 million in payments for tables, chairs, desktop computers and printers.

According to the notice, rewards were paid out as P10 million in cash, P34.857 million in various goods and P24.93 million in medicines.

The COA pointed out that the notice of disallowance was issued due to the failure of the OVP to submit documents showing the success of information-gathering and/or surveillance activities to support the payments of rewards to informers, as required by Joint Circular No. 2015-01 or the guidelines on the use of confidential and intelligence funds.

Instead, the COA said the OVP submitted a list of activities that the Vice President and officers of OVP satellite offices attended from Dec. 13 to 31, 2022.

Moreover, the list did not indicate or narrate the accomplishments that resulted from the information gathered or in the surveillance activities.

It also did not give weight to the OVP’s argument that the absence of untoward security-related incidents showed that it had complied with the requirement, saying such “does not hold water.”

The audit body also pointed out that the OVP submitted a certification from the Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group (VPSG) listing routine security activities such as casing, liaising, surveillance, profiling and ocular inspections.

But the VPSG, as salaried personnel of the AFP, are “fundamentally disqualified” from receiving informer rewards under the joint circular, the COA said, and that submitting acknowledgement receipts for payments to salaried personnel, without proof of operational success from eligible non-employee informers, rendered the P69.787 million “completely unsubstantiated and disallowable in audit.” –  Bella Cariaso