DepEd Accountant Claims She Received Envelopes w/ Cash during Duterte’s Stint as Education Secretary
DEPED ACCOUNTANT – Education Department chief accountant Ma. Rhunna Catalan admitted to receiving an envelope with cash from Vice President Sara Duterte.
After winning the vice presidency in the 2022 Elections, Vice Pres. Sara Duterte was appointed by Pres. Bongbong Marcos to lead the Department of Education. However, it was a short stint for Duterte as she resigned from being the education secretary this June.
However, the short stint of Duterte as the education secretary is filled with several issues and accusations. There are a lot of questions regarding her office’s spending of the multi-million Confidential Funds in 2022 in a speedy manner. It gained different reactions from the people and the DepEd was slashed from the CIFs in the succeeding years.
In June, the resignation of Vice Pres. Sara Duterte from being the DepEd secretary shocked many people. It also triggered the speculations that the relationship between Duterte and Pres. Bongbong Marcos has turned sour.
In the next weeks and months, Duterte threw heated tirades against Marcos. According to her, he does not know how to be a president. She also threatened Senator Imee Marcos that she will throw the body of Marcos Sr. into the West Philippine Sea if the alleged attacks against her don’t stop.
Although she has already left the helm of the education department, there are still a lot of issues surrounding the stint of Vice Pres. Sara Duterte as DepEd secretary which has yet to be clarified. Previously, a former DepEd undersecretary claimed that Vice Pres. Duterte gave away money to her subordinates during her term.
Recently, another official of the Department of Education, DepEd chief accountant Ma. Rhunna Catalan, claimed that she received envelopes with money from Vice Pres. Sara Duterte during her term. Based on a report on ABS-CBN News, Catalan tagged the cash inside the envelope as “minimal amount”.
“It’s not even… It’s 25,000,” Catalan responded to House Committee On Good Government and Public Accountability Chairperson and Manila Rep. Joel Chua. Based on the report, the DepEd Accountant also claimed that the envelope was given by Assistant Secretary Sunshine Fajarda.
According to DepEd chief accountant Ma. Rhunna Catalan, she allegedly received nine envelopes with cash from February to September 2023. She claimed that she did not sign in a voucher and she believed that it was from the personal budget of the Vice President.
“I asked Asec. Shine [Fajarda] if it was part of the confidential funds. She said no, it’s just an allowance from the Vice President,” Catalan said.
Based on the report, the DepEd Accountant claimed that there were allegedly no instances of people in the DepEd being given envelopes with cash in the previous administrations. She also claimed that it did not happen prior to the release of the confidential funds.
According to Catalan, if she knew that the money is from the CIFs, she would have refused to receive it. Currently, Vice Pres. Sara Duterte is urged to account the P112.5 million confidential funds of DepEd.