‘Team Grocery’ on list of OVP fund recipients

MANILA, Philippines — Apart from potato chip and cellular phone brands, names of popular restaurants, fruits and root crops, the liquidation reports of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) under Sara Duterte have been found to include a growing list of daily grocery items.

Topping the list is “Beverly Claire Pampano,” referencing a popular fish, followed by “Mico Harina,” whose surname translates to flour then “Patty Ting” and “Ralph Josh Bacon” – referring to burger staples, while “Sala Casim” refers to kasim or pork shoulder.

House Deputy Majority Leader Paolo Ortega V noted that the new names, which the OVP submitted to the Commission on Audit for liquidation purposes, bear a resemblance to food items commonly found in wet markets and neighborhood groceries.

The latest list of bogus names is tied to disbursements from the OVP’s P500-million confidential funds.

Like the first batches of dubious names, all of these names could not be found in the official records of the Philippine Statistics Authority, whether in its list of official birth, marriage or death certificates.

Out of 1,992 supposed recipients of confidential funds at OVP, Ortega said 1,322 had no birth records, 1,456 had no marriage records, and 1,593 had no death records.

Ortega hinted that the absence of government-issued records suggests that someone may have deliberately crafted the “grocery list” to have the confidential funds released the soonest.

“If these names are all dubious, then where have all these millions of funds go?” he asked.

The first batch bore names like “Mary Grace Piattos” and “Kokoy Villamin,” the second referred to “Xiaome Ocho,” “Renan Piatos and Pia Piatos-Lim,” third involved “Jay Kamote,” “Miggy Mango” and five “Dodong(s)” while the fourth have shown names “Amoy Liu,” “Fernan Amuy,” and “Joug De Asim.”

Manila Rep. Joel Chua, chair of the House committee on good government and public accountability, revealed earlier that 405 out of the 677 names listed as beneficiaries of the Department of Education’s confidential funds under the Vice President have no birth records.

Similar controversies – including names referencing snack brands, tech gadgets and random aliases – have also appeared in previous records tied to the OVP and DepEd’s combined P612.5-million confidential funds.

Duterte was the education secretary from July 2022 to July 2024.