On September 23, 2024, a member of the "Young Guns" group in the House of Representatives pointed out that under the leadership of Vice President Sara Duterte, the Office of the Vice President (OVP) is suspected of having a "pattern" of improper fund management.
Assistant Majority Leader and Representative of the First District of Zambales, Jay Khonghun, questioned how the OVP exhausted 500 million pesos of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) within seven months, with the Commission on Audit (COA) identifying about 237 million pesos of suspicious expenditures.
Khonghun stated that this discovery prompted him to once again call for Vice President Duterte to directly address these concerns about the fund usage, rather than continuing to evade the issue. He specifically mentioned that COA had rejected expenditures worth 73 million pesos and noted in the Audit Observation Memorandum (AOM) that an additional 164 million pesos of funds were problematic.
COA's audit results showed that the OVP's allocation of 125 million pesos in the fourth quarter of 2022 was depleted in just 11 days, with an average daily expenditure of 11.364 million pesos, of which 73 million pesos (58.6%) were formally rejected. COA has instructed the Vice President and other responsible officials to repay this amount.
During the budget review on August 27, Representative Mikaela Angela Suansing of the First District of Nueva Ecija outlined COA's findings, with Vice President Duterte present but disregarding Suansing's statements and rebutting her.
The House Budget Committee ultimately recommended reducing the OVP's budget to 733 million pesos, reallocating the reduced 1.29 billion pesos to poverty alleviation projects of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Health (DOH).
Previously, Rodge Gutierrez, representative of the 1-Rider party-list, also pointed out that the OVP allegedly misused 375 million pesos of confidential and intelligence funds in 2023, calling for further audit oversight. He believes that COA may soon issue a formal rejection notice for these funds for 2023.
Vice President Duterte needs to provide a transparent explanation to the public and respond to these queries.
