Can Sara Duterte use confidential funds to reimburse prior expenses on Xmas parties?
During the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte on Tuesday, August 11, the prosecution presented the Office of the Vice President’s response to the notice of suspension issued by the Commission on Audit (COA) on the OVP’s P125-million confidential spending in December 2022.
To justify the regularity of the spending, the OVP cited its mounted events such as a gift-giving activity in Samar, Christmas parties in Manila and Quezon City, and tree-planting in Leyte.
What’s striking was that those events, according to the OVP, took place anywhere from December 13 to 19, 2022, before it even encashed the funds on December 20, and was authorized to disburse the funds from December 21 to 31, 2022.
There are two practical questions here: First, can the OVP even use the confidential funds in relation to parties? Second, can the agency use the secret funds for expenses made prior to their release?
The main document governing the use of confidential and intelligence funds is Joint Circular No. 2015-01 among COA, the Department of Budget and Management, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Governance Commission for GOCCs, and the Department of National Defense.
Section 4.11.2 of that memo explicitly prohibits the use of confidential and intelligence funds for “representation, consultancy fees, or entertainment expenses.”
Section 4.8 enumerates the authorized uses of confidential funds:
- Purchase of information necessary for the formulation and implementation of activities relevant to national security
- Rental of transport vehicle related to confidential activities
- Rentals related to the maintenance of safe houses
- Purchase or rental of supplies for confidential operations “that cannot be done through regular procedures without compromising the information gathering activity concerned”
- Payment of rewards to informers, among other things
The second question was raised by presiding officer Chiz Escudero: Is it possible that the OVP used the confidential funds to reimburse prior expenses?
The prosecution’s witness, state auditor Xylene Mae del Campo, was quick to cite the same joint circular to say that it is not allowed.
Section 6.1.2 explicitly states, “In no case shall cash advance for confidential funds and/or intelligence funds be utilized as reimbursement of the expenses prior to the granting of cash advance.”
It was Del Campo who drafted the notice of disallowance against the OVP, ordering the agency to return P73 million out of its P125-million confidential fund allocation in 2022. – Rappler.com
