Senator Risa Hontiveros on Monday questioned the switch of allocations in 2022 to confidential funds that did not exist that 12 months within the Office of the Vice President.
“Kung totoo at tama ang mga napabalitang report, dapat may managot sa unauthorized at malinaw na iligal na pagtransfer ng pondo papunta sa Office of the Vice President (OVP) noong 2022,” Hontiveros mentioned.
(If the report is true, somebody must be held accountable for the unauthorized and clearly unlawful switch of funds to the Office of the Vice President in 2022.)
“These serious allegations and reports demand immediate investigation,” she added.
At the listening to of the Senate Committee on Finance on the proposed P2.3-billion funds of the OVP for 2024, Vice President Sara Duterte mentioned the OVP in August 2022 requested confidential funds from the Office of the President.
She mentioned the OVP obtained the confidential funds in December that 12 months.
Pimentel raised the problem of legality, saying that there was no merchandise within the OVP funds for confidential bills in 2022
“It’s nothing, it’s zero. It’s not even mentioned in the line budgeting for the OVP and yet at year’s end calendar 2022, we will now have an entry [of] P125 million charged to a line which did not exist at the very beginning,” Pimentel mentioned.
Duterte mentioned the Department of Budget and Management can be in a greater place to reply.
“We requested it from the Office of the President and it was granted through the Department of Budget and Management,” Duterte mentioned.
“I think the Department of Budget and Management can better answer the question on the transfer of funds from their source to the Office of the Vice President,” she added.
Hontiveros in a press release cited Section 25(5) of Article VI of the 1987 Constitution which states, “No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of appropriations; however, the President, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the heads of Constitutional Commissions may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.”
“In the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for 2022, there were zero items for any confidential funds earmarked for the Office of the Vice President. Ano ito, multo? May ghost transfer?” Hontiveros mentioned.
“So while it is true that the law allows the President—among certain other officials—to realign or transfer appropriations which have become savings, these savings cannot augment a non-existent item in the GAA,” she added.
“Confidential funds are not cheat codes which can be used to blatantly violate existing laws and regulations,” Hontiveros mentioned.
GMA News Online has sought additional remark from the OVP, Malacañang, and the DBM. It will publish their feedback as quickly as they turn into obtainable.
The Commission on Audit (COA), in its 2022 Annual Audit Report, disclosed that the OVP had P125 million in confidential bills final 12 months regardless of not having an appropriation for intelligence or confidential funds below the 2022 GAA.
Earlier, Duterte mentioned there was nothing irregular or unauthorized within the utilization of the P125 million even when such an merchandise was not offered below final 12 months’s GAA.
She additionally mentioned the OVP had already deliberate and recognized occasions, actions, and initiatives that may be lined by the confidential fund as early as August 2022— two months after she took her oath because the fifteenth Vice President of the nation. —NB, GMA Integrated News
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
