Beyond odd-sounding names, supposed recipients of Vice President Sara Duterte’s confidential funds from her office and the Department of Education (DepEd) in 2023 were recorded as minors, dead, or missing in the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The youngest was a 2-month-old baby who died in 1965, or 60 years before supposedly signing acknowledgment receipts (ARs) for the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) funds.
Another recipient, Mary Grace Piattos, had no PSA records of birth, marriage, or death. Lawmakers said Piattos could be a combination of the names of a restaurant and a potato chip brand even before Duterte’s impeachment trial for misuse of confidential funds began.
“Based on the Civil Registry System (CRS) database, there is no Mary Grace Piattos in our records,” PSA Assistant National Statistician Marizza Grande testified on Monday, Sept. 7, at the resumption of the Senate impeachment trial.
Actual aliases
But a new development was the pronouncement of Duterte’s lawyers that the names in the ARs were actually aliases, which House prosecutors said was an admission that came “a tad too late,” considering that they were now in the middle of the court proceedings.
On Day 22 of Duterte’s impeachment trial, the prosecutors said they will no longer call as witnesses Col. Raymund Lachica and Col. Dennis Nolasco, security officers designated by Duterte to handle her confidential funds in the OVP and DepEd.
According to the House lead prosecutor and Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro, “the allegation of misuse and misappropriation of confidential funds has been satisfied already by the testimony of witnesses presented.”
But following clarifications from Senator-judge Erwin Tulfo, who wanted Lachica to testify, presiding officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero said the court could order him to appear in the trial.
House private prosecutor Renato Robles said they will also no longer call DepEd special disbursing officer Edward Fajarda for “humanitarian” reasons, noting that he was still recovering from a stroke.
Robles had earlier made several stipulations based on Fajarda’s testimony before the House committee on good government and public accountability in 2024, including the handing ₱112.50 million in confidential funds to Nolasco, who implemented DepEd’s confidential operations.
Fajarda also prepared the ARs and liquidation reports that Duterte certified and signed.
Bribery case
Luistro clarified that the prosecutors will not drop the bribery case against Duterte as earlier reported, saying this will be taken up after tackling allegations of the Vice President’s unexplained wealth as part of the four articles of impeachment against Duterte.
The prosecutors concluded three weeks of presentation of evidence on Duterte’s grave threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and on her alleged misuse of ₱500 million in confidential funds.
On Monday, they presented Grande and PSA documents verifying 1,992 names in the ARs of the OVP and 677 names of the DepEd, or a total of 2,669 names, listed as recipients of their respective confidential funds.
Under questioning by House private prosecutor Mae Divinagracia, Grande said House prosecutor and Manila Rep. Joel Chua wrote the PSA in November and December 2024 on behalf of the House committee to verify civil registry documents of 2,669 names from the CRS database.
The PSA database showed that as of 2023, 1,685 had no birth, marriage, or death records; 37 were dead, and 25 were children, according to Grande.
She also said she again verified some names on the list after she found them “unusual.” These included Arthur Baon, Beverly Claire Pampano, Matthew N. Keso, Charlie Sampaloc Jr., Maxine Callos, and Ralph Josh Bacon.
Baon, a recipient of ₱150,000 with payment for the purchase of supplies from the OVP, had no record of birth, marriage, or death in the PSA, according to Grande.
Minors
Twenty of the minors were from the OVP list while five were from the DepEd list. The names included Mico Alquizar, who received ₱400,000 on March 28, 2023, with records showing he was only 1-year old, given that he was born on June 11, 2022.
Two other recipients were Beatrice Cuenca and Mikay de los Reyes, whose records show they were 1-year old and 3-year-old, respectively. The youngest, Marlin Sunga, was not only 2 months old when she supposedly signed the AR, but records show that she died on Nov. 2, 1965.
When Divinagracia asked Grande, “What kind of confidential information was given by them?” defense counsel Justin Gular objected to the inquiry, which Escudero sustained.
Senator-judge Raffy Tulfo told the court that, in his “humblest opinion, aliases were used” in the ARs. “And if these names happen to match in the birth certificates, this was pure luck,” Tulfo said.
Same signatures
But he said a glaring fact was that the signatures in the ARs were the “same.” He pushed anew for Lachica and Nolasco to appear in the trial as they were responsible for their names in the documents.
“I’m very sure that while they were filling up the names, they were laughing at it. We are being made out to be goofballs by those people in the DepEd and OVP,” Tulfo said in Filipino.
When the senator-judge asked the prosecutors whether they followed this lead by talking to parents, Divinagracia replied in the negative, saying they did not know their whereabouts, given the limited time.
Divinagracia also said the defense team never said the names in the ARs were aliases. But if these were so, she reminded them that this would be “improper” under the anti-alias law.
Gular countered: “The prosecution has the burden of proof to explain. If they’re claiming these are aliases, the burden [of proving] is theirs.”
Tulfo made it clear that what was “questionable” was that the different names in the ARs had similar signatures. “That’s where the fraud is,” he said.
In his cross-examination, Gular asked Grande whether she was “not aware” that the names verified by PSA were aliases. “I have no information they were aliases,” she conceded.
The witness also replied to Gular’s queries that she had “no information” on whether these names were “operational code names” or names that come from intelligence operatives.
The defense lawyer asked her if Grande was only testifying “on what the PSA found or did not find in the database.” She said she was basing it “on the record available or not in the database.” CS
