The difference between 10B dollars and 105K euros

It’s a pretty big difference, and not just in monetary value.

It’s $10 billion that isn’t quite there – anywhere – and that not even a presidential pronouncement could conjure up. Somehow somewhere in some meeting or other someone may have said something about some $10B being available for some fund for ASEAN banks, but unfortunately – as in a few other occasions in the past – a big announcement was made before the reality was verified.

The 105K euros, on the other hand, is actually and really there – supposedly wired to a PNP account even before its bearer came back (if you believe the Interior secretary, boss of the police), or “still in Russia,” according to the one who was caught with the money when he came home last Tuesday.

Like the non-existent $10B, the existence of this 105K euros is quite a mystery. Contingency fund, emergency medical expenses, cash advance – by any name it’s a mighty hefty sum of money to be carrying around, to be on standby for a handful of top cops attending a conference, plus an even bigger handful of wives who went along for the “women’s activities.” The 105K euros is merely a contingency fund – meaning it is NOT the main fund that would pay for airfare, hotel accommodation, food, conference registration, which would all have been paid for separately, probably before these privileged cops – what a retirement gift! – left for Russia, so please don’t babble about how expensive a city St. Petersburg is. 

If the official explanations are to be believed, then the Philippine National Police does not seem to be short of money after all; I wonder if the other top cops who are on official missions abroad – like the one tasked to investigate this incident who also happens to be attending a conference abroad, in Germany this time – have similar contingency funds, or is this delegation especially privileged? And what does the cop on the beat who’s scraping by on a small salary, the operative on stakeout who is not given gasoline money or cellphone load or sometimes even food allowance or any sort of contingency fund, have to say about this?