COA probes fund mess in DA-Caraga

BUTUAN CITY, Philippines  – The Commission on Audit (COA) has discovered a huge cash shortage at the Caraga office of the Department of Agriculture (DA) after conducting an initial cash examination.

“I don’t know the exact figure, that’s why we need to reopen their accounts for auditing because more than P35 million could be missing. But initially, yes, a huge cash amount is missing,” COA Commissioner Heidi Mendoza said during a visit here last week.

On June 27 last year, DA-Caraga assistant regional director Edgardo Dagala Dahino asked the National Bureau of Investigation’s Caraga office to investigate DA-Caraga disbursing officer Mariza Balaba Salise.

In his letter to the NBI, Dahino attached 71 photocopied checks from the Philippine Veterans Bank’s Butuan branch and four photocopied checks from the Land Bank of the Philippines’ Butuan branch. The checks for various amounts were withdrawn from January 2006 to May 2010.

Dahino said the government funds, deposited as trust funds, were unaccounted for and that his signature on the checks was forged.

DA-Caraga administrative services and finance chief Jessica Da-an said in an earlier interview with The STAR that Salise has gone on leave without any notice since June 23 last year.

Da-an said the DA filed administrative cases before the Office of the Ombudsman in Davao after Salise went missing, making her the primary suspect in the fund shortage.

Based on their initial and final audit of the trust fund accounts, Da-an said the missing funds had already reached P53.3 million.

However, the COA wants to conduct a separate investigation to get to the bottom of the problem.

“We want to know if there were connivance among the banks, offices and other individuals,” Mendoza said.

Last Jan. 12, COA chairperson Maria Gracia Pulido Tan issued a special authority to reopen the government accounts.

This would allow the COA to track the starting cash balance, examine the extent of fund transactions, find out how much funds got lost, and identify those involved in the fund mess.

Mendoza assured the people in Caraga, particularly the poor farmers who may have been the beneficiaries of the missing funds, that justice will be served.

Earlier some farmers, peasants and civil society groups in Caraga decried the loss of vital agriculture funds, which could have helped hundreds or thousands of farmers in the region.