Amid OVP Confidential Funds Issue, PSA Verify Supposed Recipients
PSA – The Philippine Statistics Authority holds no birth record of over 1,300 recipients of the controversial Confidential Funds of the Office of the Vice President (OVP).
Vice Pres. Sara Duterte and the Office of the Vice President are currently surrounded by issues and questions over the spending of the Confidential Funds. The Vice President is also being questioned over the Confidential Funds of the Department of Education (DepEd) during her term.
Impeachment complaints were filed against Vice Pres. Sara Duterte over the controversial spending of her office’s Confidential Funds. The House of Representatives even decided to end the investigation on the fund of the OVP following the filing of impeachment complaints by two (2) different groups of proponents.
Duterte is being questioned over the use of her P500 million Confidential Funds. Some of the names in the receipts showing the alleged recipients of the OVP Confidential Funds were sent to the Philippine Statistics Authority or PSA for the verification of their identities.
However, based on a report on GMA News, more than 1,300 of the names submitted for verification have no birth records. There were 1,992 names submitted for verification and only 670 have possible matches. To be excact, there were 1,322 names with no Birth Records.
The PSA records also showed that 1,456 names have no marriage records and 1,593 lacked death records. The findings of the verification were sent to House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability chairman Joel Chua said.
“This certification from the PSA leaves little doubt — if these names cannot be found in the civil registry, it strongly suggests they do not exist,” Chua said.
Based on the report, Chua further stressed that if the recipients allegedly do not exist, it raises a question on where did the money go. Recently, the Commission on Audit has released their records on the Confidential Funds spent by the different government offices
The Office of Pres. Bongbong Marcos remains the top spender of the Confidential and Intelligence funds. Vice Pres. Sara Duterte called on the House to also investigate the office of Pres. Marcos.