Comelec official, four others face raps for unliquidated cash advances

MANILA, Philippines - Heads will roll at the Commission on Elections (Comelec) over various irregularities, including some P125-million unliquidated cash advances by a top official and four other employees, Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said yesterday.

In an interview, Brillantes said that he would pursue the filing of administrative and criminal charges against concerned employees over absenteeism, falsification of checks and unchecked overtime pay.

“I already promised that I’d institute reforms in this commission. I started this quietly and I don’t want to boast about this. I have initiated an internal investigation and this is what we found out,” he added.

Brillantes said that Deputy Director for Finance Gideon de Guzman had the highest unliquidated cash advances worth P48 million for a period of five years.

De Guzman, who had been removed from his post, did not deny the cash advances and said that he can produce documents.

Brillantes said they also found out that there were unliquidated cash advances ranging from P3 million to P40 million made by four employees.

“As a precaution, I already issued a policy that those with unliquidated cash advances should not be given their salaries. They have to liquidate first,” he added.

He said a resident auditor assigned by the Commission on Audit is now looking into the irregularities.

 “I’ve been quietly reviewing documents. We’ll be handling the administrative aspect while we will pass the criminal aspect to the Office of the Ombudsman. Some offenses constitute malversation of public funds,” Brillantes said.

The Comelec chairman earlier vowed to cleanse the poll body of anomalies whether or not he will be confirmed by the Commission on Appointments.

Brillantes had been bypassed twice by the CA due to the opposition of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano who had been critical of him.

The poll chief used to be the election lawyer of retired Justice Dante Tinga, who lost to Cayetano’s wife Lani in the 2010 mayoral race in Taguig.

Tinga had filed an election protest before the Comelec and the camp of Cayetano was suspecting that Brillantes was favoring his former client.