MANILA, Philippines — Nearly two-thirds of people listed by Vice President Sara Duterte as recipients of her P500-million confidential funds in the Office of the Vice President (OVP) have no birth certificates, indicating that all of them are fictitious like “Mary Grace Piattos” of the Department of Education (DepEd).
In a report to the House committee on good government and public accountability, National Statistician Dennis Mapa said that 1,322 of the 1,992 people that the committee sought to verify have no existing “birth records” in the database of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
In a letter to committee chairman and Manila 3rd District Rep. Joel Chua dated Dec. 11, Mapa said only 670 names were identified as “most likely matched” to existing birth records of the PSA.
Mapa said the PSA also found out that of the 1,992 names submitted for verification, 1,456 lacked marriage records, with only 536 showing possible matches.
Similarly, 1,593 had no death records, while just 399 had corresponding entries.
The current batch of names under scrutiny appeared on acknowledgment receipts (ARs) submitted by the OVP to the Commission on Audit to justify confidential fund expenditures from late 2022 to the third quarter of 2023.
Chua said the PSA’s latest findings provide strong evidence that the ARs submitted to justify the P500 million in confidential funds were likely fabricated.
“This certification from the PSA leaves little doubt – if these names cannot be found in the civil registry, it strongly suggests they do not exist. The ARs may have been manufactured to justify the disbursement of confidential funds,” Chua said.
Chua’s committee is investigating Duterte for the alleged misuse of her confidential funds in the OVP and DepEd while she was still its secretary.
“These findings raise a critical question: if the recipients don’t exist, where did the money go? This is not just a clerical error; this points to a deliberate effort to misuse public funds,” Chua said.
The verification followed earlier PSA findings that revealed discrepancies in records tied to a separate P112.5-million confidential funds disbursed by the DepEd during Duterte’s term as secretary in 2023.
Out of 677 names investigated in that case, 405 had no birth records, 445 lacked marriage certificates and 508 had no death certificates.
“Mary Grace Piattos,” one of the names that appeared in the DepEd receipts, came under scrutiny after the PSA confirmed that no such person exists in its civil registry database.
The name, which many noted as a mashup of a popular restaurant and snack brand, has since come to symbolize the alleged irregularities in the use of confidential funds in the OVP and DepEd.
Another name, “Kokoy Villamin,” appeared in both the OVP and DepEd receipts but with inconsistent signatures.
Just like Piattos, the PSA confirmed that Villamin also has no records in the civil registry, further fueling suspicions of fabricated recipients.