PSA says 1,322 recipients of VP Sara Duterte's confidential funds have no birth records
1,332 of the 1,992 names listed as recipients of the Office of the Vice President's (OVP) P500 million confidential funds have no birth records, the Philippine Statistics Authority said in a statement.
The PSA issued its response to the House of Representatives' Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability's request to verify the identities of the nearly 2,000 individuals relative to the panel's investigation into the office under Vice President Sara Duterte.
Out of the names, only 670 were identified as "most likely matched" with existing records.
The agency also searched through other records and found that 1,456 individuals had no marriage records, and 1,593 didn't match with death records.
On Dec. 10, the House committee's chairman Rep. Joel Chua asked the PSA to verify the names. This came after a previous PSA report that found 405 out of 667 names linked to the P112.5 million in confidential funds disbursed in 2023 by the Department of Education had no birth records.
"A certification that these names are not in the PSA database would bolster suspicions that they do not exist and that the ARs were fabricated to justify confidential fund expenditures by the OVP and DepEd under Vice President Duterte," Chua said as per One News.
"These findings raise a critical question: If the recipients don't exist, where did the money go? This is not just a clerical error. This points to a deliberate effort to misuse public funds," he added.
Prior to this, PSA said on Dec. 3 upon checking its Civil Registry System database, “Mary Grace Piattos,” who is allegedly among the recipients of confidential funds, was found to have no Certificate of Live Birth, Certificate of Marriage, or Certificate of Death.
Mary Grace Piattos' signature appeared in acknowledgment receipts for confidential funds of the offices held by Duterte: P500 million for the OVP from 2022 to the third quarter of 2023 and P112.5 million for DepEd when she was still the secretary.
However, administration lawmakers flagged that the “person” isn't real. On Nov. 18, the House committee announced it's offering a reward worth P1 million for any information on Mary Grace Piattos.
Another name, a "Kokoy Villamin," appeared in both OVP and DepEd receipts but showed at least two different signatures under their names.
Duterte has been in hot water for the alleged misuse of funds for her offices' programs and her refusal to answer questions regarding her offices' expenses, particularly the confidential funds worth P775 million for the OVP and DepEd during her budget proposal's first hearing. She was seeking a P2.037-billion budget for 2025, which was cut to P733 million. Her office has a P1.885-billion budget for 2024.
