Senator-judges in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte expressed deep frustration on Wednesday, Aug. 5, over the Commission on Audit’s (COA) failure to go beyond the liquidation documents it reviewed regarding the alleged misused multimillion-peso confidential funds.
Roderick Wamil, a former state auditor of the COA’s Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Unit (Icfau), had repeatedly told them that he was restricted to a document-based compliance audit of the funds under the agency’s current guidelines stated in Joint Memorandum Circular 2015-01.
For the past two days, Wamil was the House prosecutors’ first witness in their allegation that Vice President Sara Duterte misused her confidential funds from the last quarter of 2022 through the first three quarters of 2023. On Wednesday, it was the turn of the senator-judges to quiz him.
The witness, who audited the confidential funds of Duterte in the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) when she was then its secretary, said he only relied on documents submitted by the two offices to liquidate ₱612.5 million in confidential funds.
Names of informants
That was the explanation he would give to the senator-judges who asked, for instance, whether he had validated that the listed names of informants paid for rewards by the OVP and DepEd were actual persons or aliases.
Wamil had earlier testified about discrepancies and insufficiencies in documents that COA had requested to back their use of the confidential funds.
He revealed that the OVP and DepEd not only submitted acknowledgment receipts (ARs) instead of the required official receipts and sales invoices but also spent millions on items not allowed under COA’s joint circular.
When asked by Senator-judge Erwin Tulfo if the informants receiving OVP and DepEd reward payments used aliases, Wamil said they could not determine from the documents as these did not indicate that the names were aliases.
Senator-judge Bam Aquino then asked him if aliases or codes in ARs are allowed by the COA. “Based on the provisions of the joint circular, it is neither allowed nor prohibited since it is silent in the joint circular,” the state auditor replied.
Aquino asked whether state auditors expected that the payees or informants were real persons then, Wamil said: “Like what I said earlier, we are document-based. So we don’t have a way to determine if this is an alias or not.”
Wamil also gave the same explanation to Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian, saying that compliance audits “focused” on the face value of the documents, payment dates, and total amounts.
Senator-judge Panfilo Lacson questioned why COA was relying only on “paper audits” and why there were no “physical audits.”
“It seems your auditing process is lacking. How would you know if the person signing the acknowledgment receipts is a legitimate person if you cannot determine if the person behind the alias is real?” Lacson said.
He told Wamil to recommend that COA amend its joint circular.
“In fairness to the concerned offices or persons being audited, due process must be complete. If you rely on documents based on your joint memorandum circular, you don’t go beyond that,” Lacson added.
Unallowable expenses
Meanwhile, Wamil told the senator-judges that he found it “not normal” for the purchase of medicines, which is an unallowable COA expense, to be used as rewards in exchange for intelligence information.
Asked by Senator-judge Risa Hontiveros whether COA had confronted before that medicines were used for information, he said: “This is the first time.”
“This is puzzling because if the person is sick, …why does he need to give information before he is given medicine?” Hontiveros said.
She told Wamil: “As an auditor, is this filed under reward or aid?” The witness said that since their audit is document-based, they could see this as a payment of reward or provision of medicine.
Asked further if this could be a form of “ayuda” or aid, Wamil said it is possible if aid means provision of medicine.
When Hontiveros asked what could be the ailment of Mary Grace Piattos, who received ₱70,000 as reward, the auditor said: “I wouldn’t know. It’s not in the submitted documents.”
Piattos had been a controversial subject in the 2024 House hearings on Duterte’s confidential funds, with lawmakers alleging that it was among several fictitious names to justify the spending of her confidential funds. They said Piattos sounded like a combination of a restaurant’s brand name and a popular snack.
111 disbursements in 1 day
Senator-judge Francis Pangilinan questioned Wamil on the 111 disbursements made by the OVP in one day on Dec. 23, 2022, from the ARs submitted as evidence by the prosecution panel.
“Would you consider that a usual disbursement in one day?” Pangilinan asked. “Does it fall under regular or irregular [disbursement]?”
Wamil said: “I wouldn’t know. But that’s unusual….”
The senator-judge then asked him about his testimony on Tuesday that Duterte’s officials, including now impeachment defense lawyer Michael Poa, had tried to persuade COA to issue an “audit query” rather than an “audit observation memorandum” (AOM) if state auditors found issues in their audit of confidential funds.
Poa and Duterte’s chief of staff Zulieka Lopez had requested the issuance of an audit query to Wamil and two other COA officials in September 2023.
Wamil said they would violate COA issuances by issuing an audit query to the OVP and DepEd. He testified that they later issued an AOM to the OVP, but the latter did not accept it when served, citing lack of authorization to receive it.
Pangilinan asked Wamil if this was the first time a government agency refused to accept an AOM, and he replied in the affirmative.
At the start of the impeachment trial, Senator-judge Raffy Tulfo asked Senate presiding judge Francis Escudero if there was a conflict of interest on Poa’s part as a defense lawyer when he had earlier requested that the COA not issue an AOM to the OVP audit.
Escudero told Tulfo that Poa was “not a named respondent” in the impeachment trial. “There is no conflict of interest because he is not the one on trial,” he said of Poa. CS
Read more: Duterte execs sought COA ‘query’ on secret funds instead of memo, says witness
