Nearly two-thirds of individuals listed as recipients of P500 million in confidential funds from the Office of the Vice President (OVP) have no birth records, fueling suspicions that they may all be fictitious, much like “Mary Grace Piattos.”
The Philippine Statistics Authority, tasked by the House committee on good government and public accountability to verify civil registry records of 1,992 individuals linked to the controversial fund, found that 1,322 individuals lacked birth records in its database.
Only 670 names were identified as “most likely matched” to existing records, it cited.
It found of the 1,992 names submitted for verification, 1,456 lacked marriage records, with only 536 showing possible matches, while similarly, 1,593 had no death records, and just 399 had corresponding entries.
The results were detailed in a Dec. 11 letter addressed to panel chair Manila Rep. Joel Chua from National Statistician and Civil Registrar General Undersecretary Claire Dennis Mapa.
The current batch of names under scrutiny appeared on acknowledgment receipts submitted by the OVP to the Commission on Audit to justify confidential fund expenditures from late 2022 to the third quarter of 2023.
Chua said the PSA’s latest findings provided strong evidence that the acknowledgment receipts submitted to justify the P500 million in confidential funds were likely fabricated.
“This certification from the PSA leaves little doubt — if these names cannot be found in the civil registry, it strongly suggests they do not exist. The ARs may have been manufactured to justify the disbursement of confidential funds,” he said.
“These findings raise a critical question: if the recipients don’t exist, where did the money go? This is not just a clerical error; this points to a deliberate effort to misuse public funds,” he added.
The verification followed previous PSA findings showing discrepancies in records tied to separate disbursements from the Department of Education’s (DepEd) P112.5-million confidential funds in 2023 when Duterte was still education secretary.
Out of 677 names investigated in that case, 405 had no birth records, 445 lacked marriage certificates, and 508 had no death certificates.
One name in the DepEd receipts, Mary Grace Piattos, became a symbol of public skepticism after the PSA confirmed that no such individual exists in its civil registry database.
Another supposed recipient of confidential funds, “Kokoy Villamin,” appeared in both the OVP and DepEd receipts but with inconsistent signatures.
Like Piattos, the PSA confirmed that Villamin also lacks records in the civil registry, further fueling suspicions of fabricated recipients.
