Intel fund recipients match names of kids, dead people

MANILA, Philippines —  A person who was recorded to have died 61 years ago and a two-month-old baby were among the supposed informants paid by Vice President Sara Duterte from her confidential funds.

This emerged yesterday at the resumption of the impeachment trial of Duterte, wherein Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) assistant national statistician Marizza Grande testified that the recipients of Duterte’s confidential funds included the names of 37 dead people and 25 minors. Grande called the discovery “unusual and unique,” during direct examination by private prosecutor Mae Divinagracia.

Grande said the PSA discovered that 1,685 of the purported recipients of Duterte’s confidential funds have “no records” at all in PSA’s database.

The PSA, Grande said, verified a total of 2,669 payees from the list of acknowledgment receipts (ARs)
 submitted as liquidation reports to the Commission on Audit by the Office of the Vice President and by the Department of Education which Duterte concurrently headed from July 2022 to July 2024.

The PSA official also revealed that a certain Beatrice Cuenca – born in January 2022 based on records – allegedly received P400,000 confidential funds, as shown on an AR she supposedly signed in March 2023.

Another individual, Mikay delos Reyes, was supposed to have signed an AR for P200,000 in 2023 even if her PSA records show she was born in 2020.

A certain Miko Alquizar was less than a year old, being born June 2022, when he reportedly received P400,000. Grande said there were 20 minors from the OVP payees’ list and five from DepEd’s.

Among the deceased “informants” verified by PSA were Fortunato Salig who died in 2011 but received funds in 2022; Emilio Togan who had been dead for seven years in March 2023 and Rodolfo Traya whose death certificate stated he died in May 2021.

Other alleged informants whose names the PSA found “unusual and unique” were Arthur Baon who received P50,000, Ralph Josh Bacon (P150,000), Beverly Claire Pampana (P130,000), Charles Sampaloc Jr. (P50,000).

The others were Xiaome Ocho (P100,000), Danrick Ocho (P500,000), Tomas Panda (P50,000), Tina Matching (P250,000), and Tinan Angelo Pusa (P100,000).

Responding to queries from Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian, Grande testified there is “slim chance” that a living adult in the Philippines would have zero record of birth, marriage or death.

“There are people with no birth certificate who have record of marriage or death,” she said. “So maybe at least, one of those vital events will prove that a person exists.”

For his part, Sen. Bam Aquino urged the court to definitively establish whether the names on the controversial acknowledgment receipts were simply aliases, noting that pseudonyms would naturally not appear in the PSA database.

Not perfect

In his interjection yesterday – Day 22 of the impeachment trial – presiding officer Francis Escudero said PSA’s database appears to be not a “perfect” and “universal” record of the country’s population because of gaps in the registration system.

Escudero said this was the reason why Congress passed a law allowing the correction of clerical or typographical errors in a person’s birth records without the need for court order.

For her part, Sen. Risa Hontiveros recalled the PSA’s role in exposing the fake Filipino citizenship of convicted human trafficker and former mayor Alice Guo.

When asked by Hontiveros if the PSA believed that real people were behind the aliases listed as recipients of confidential funds, Grande said “we had no idea that these are aliases” when they performed verification upon the request of the House prosecution.- Marc Jayson Cayabyab