MANILA – Vice President Sara Duterte on Monday confirmed making a request for the controversial P125 million confidential fund of her office last year.
The amount was part of the P221.4 million budget transferred to the Office of the President (OP) by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in December 2022.
“The amount is correct and that is correct,” Duterte said, responding to the query of Senate Minority Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel during the hearing of the Senate committee on finance on the OVP’s proposed 2024 budget of P2.3 billion, which included a big confidential and intelligence funds of P500 million.
“We requested confidential funds to the Office of the President as early as August 2022 and we’re only granted the confidential funds in December 2022,” she further explained.
However, Pimentel pointed out that the confidential fund did not “exist” in the 2022 budget of the OVP.
“Parang na-augment, for [the] year 2022 kasi ito eh,” Pimentel said. “There was no item in the OVP budget for confidential expense[s] in [the] year 2022. So it’s not even one peso, 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 P125 million charged to a line which did not exist at the very beginning,” he pointed out.
Duterte reiterated that her office requested the fund and this was granted by the OP through the DBM.
“I think the DBM can better answer the question of the transfer of funds from their source to the OVP,” she said.
“But nevertheless we complied with the reportorial requirements of the use of the funds as confidential funds,” the Vice President stressed.
House Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro earlier claimed that Duterte’s office spent the P125 million confidential fund in just 19 days – from December 13-31, 2022.
“This translates to P6,578,947.37 or almost P7 million per day,” Castro pointed out in a statement last week.
Castro even believes that funds were illegally realigned because the 2022 OVP budget, which was crafted during the term of former vice president Leni Robredo, did not include a secret fund.
In her six-year tenure, Robredo never requested or included confidential funds in her office budget. (Maila Ager © Philippine Daily Inquirer)
