A military insider said this has been the practice for decades but is not necessarily confined to the present AFP leadership.
"Matagal nang practice ito sa loob ng military. Kahit na sa police (service) meron din nito," an official said, adding that the money is being sourced out of the so-called "General’s Fund."
The official explained thqt the AFP comptrollership, through its chief fiscal officer, disburses these special allowances but only to a select group and favored officers.
He said General’s Fund was specifically put up to meet the additional financial needs of senior military officials "to make their life easier for them" in an effort to prevent them from stealing from government coffers.
These special allowances also reached the lower level of the officer corps where even a junior officer assigned at the headquarters gets an extra allowance ranging from P2,000 to P3,500 on a monthly basis, explained the source.
"Kung medyo kilala at dikit ka doon sa isang mataas na opisyal, minsan matatapunan ka ng malaki-laki," the same official revealed.
Some officers who pay a courtesy call at the AFP headquarters to lobby for extra financial help when going abroad or applying for a vacation leave are usually given "pabaon," with the chief fiscal officer drawing the money from the special fund.
The official said retiring senior officers are also given their share of the "pabaon" from P1 million to P3 million depending on their contacts with the Office of the AFP Comptroller and other senior officers manning the AFP command staff.
It was learned that one Army officer who recently retired had lamented he was not given the usual "pabaon" after being informed the military establishment is "cash strapped."
The same Army official was even chided by his former classmate in the Philippine Military Academy for not heeding an advice for him to transfer back to the AFP headquarters at least a year prior to his retirement for financial reasons.
"I’m a combat officer," the Army official said. "It’s nothing to me. Pumunta lang naman ako doon dahil tradisyon na ito ng AFP para tulungan ang mga retiradong opisyal sa pagbalik nila sa civilian na buhay ," he said.
He claimed, however, that he became surprised to see junior officers prominently displaying their golf talents in the first class fairways.
The Army official also confirmed the "special fund" being handled by the AFP Comptroller. He said these multimillion-peso funds were the accumulation of savings on almost all of the transactions entered into by the AFP with various government and civilian entities.
While admitting that part of the accumulated special fund came from the so-called "conversion," the bulk of the extra savings came from the personnel services and the military’s monthly operating and maintenance expenses.
"The big chunk of this special savings came directly came from the pay and allowances of soldiers who were either dismissed, killed or demoted," he said.
"This is not to include ‘ghost’ personnel, including ‘ghost’ Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Units," the Army official added.
He said that when a soldier is dismissed or demoted, his forfeited pay and allowances go to this fund instead of being returned to the National Treasury.
The other major source of the fund is the so-called "throw back" operations, a money-making venture involving operations and maintenance services in the military.
The source claimed that J-6, being the custodians of the funds for construction and other development projects of the three major military branches, usually requires considerable percentage of the total cost of any project to be returned to higher headquarters.
"It’s already a practice that when a certain military project is being proposed, people at J-6 would usually require the requesting office of the project to ‘throw back’ 50 per cent of the project cost which is normally bloated," the source said.
The source explained the money from the General Fund no longer need to be obligated or cleared.
"Malinis na iyan, hindi na kailangan ang audit d’yan dahil galing na ang pera doon sa mga cleared and audited transactions," said the source.