HOUSE Committee on Public Accounts Chairman Terry Ridon of Bicol Saro Party-list said Thursday that the Commission on Audit’s (COA) final ruling on the disallowed P73 million confidential funds may already establish probable cause for the impeachment allegation against Vice President Sara Z. Duterte.
In a statement, Ridon explained that the COA Commission Proper was explicitly clear in its April 10 decision that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) still failed to justify in its appeal the P73 million confidential fund expenditure in December 2022.
“This is no longer a preliminary audit observation. This is no longer an unresolved administrative issue,” he said.
“This is the final judgment of the Commission on Audit En Banc—the highest constitutional audit authority of the Republic—holding that the Office of the Vice President failed to lawfully justify its use of confidential funds,” Ridon added.
In its final ruling, COA said the OVP remained vague in explaining how the disallowed confidential funds were spent. It found that none of the submitted documents proved that information-gathering or surveillance activities were actually conducted, nor did they provide a detailed narration of the alleged confidential operations.
“The OVP submitted only a generalized accomplishment report claiming that activities were ‘100% implemented,’ but failed to provide the detailed narration, breakdown, or substantiation required to show what confidential operations were actually conducted and how such operations succeeded,” Ridon said, citing the ruling.
COA also stressed that acknowledgement receipts are not enough to justify the purchase of P3.5 million worth of tables, chairs, desktop computers, and printers intended for surveillance operations in the OVP’s safehouses — similar to the P69.787 million encashed for the “payment of rewards.”
It said that “official receipts or sales invoices are required as DEPs (Documentary Evidence of Payments), and not merely acknowledgment receipts.”
For Ridon, this simply meant that the OVP “could not explain why millions of pesos in alleged rewards, goods, and medicines supposedly given to informants were necessary, reasonable, and directly connected to legitimate confidential operations.”
What is most compelling, however, is COA’s conclusion that the OVP still failed to prove that its expenses were genuinely intended for confidential activities, he said.
“The Commission expressly found that the activities described by the OVP were governance-related, not intelligence-related, and bore no semblance of surveillance, information-gathering, national security, peace and order, or prevention of illegal activities—the only purposes for which confidential funds may lawfully be used,” Ridon added.
Instead of charging millions of pesos to the OVP’s confidential funds, COA ruled it should have instead charged it in the OVP’s regular General Fund.
Ridon said Duterte can no longer hide behind arguments of “clerical oversights” or “technical deficiencies,” as the fiscal watchdog has already ruled in finality that the confidential funds were unlawfully used “without sufficient legal, factual or documentary basis.”
With other evidence on record, including the National Bureau of Investigation’s finding that several receipts were written by a single person and the Philippine Statistics Authority’s certification of fictitious recipients, Ridon said the justice committee has already built its “central evidentiary pillar” for the confidential fund misuse ground.
“The House Committee on Justice is not acting on speculation. It is acting on the final findings of the Commission on Audit itself,” he said.
“When the constitutional body tasked with safeguarding the lawful expenditure of public funds has ruled that the Office of the Vice President failed to justify the use of tens of millions in confidential funds, the House Committee on Justice is fully justified—indeed duty-bound—to determine whether such conduct constitutes probable cause for impeachment against the Vice President,” Ridon added.
Now that the COA Commission Proper has denied Duterte’s appeal, the vice president and two other OVP officials responsible for authorizing, disbursing, and reporting the confidential fund use are required to return P73 million to the government.
