Who could be the officials and staff in the Office of the Vice President (OVP) who signed acknowledgment receipts (ARs) for confidential funds amounting to millions of pesos under the name of ‘Mary Grace Piattos’ and other obviously fictitious names?
That’s the P125-million question that the House committee on good government and public accountability committee would like to answer pronto. They have even put up a P1-million bounty for information leading to the identification of those who had likely used aliases to hide the crime of brazen theft of taxpayers’ money.
‘Mary Grace’ is the name of a popular restaurant while ‘Piattos’ is a potato chips brand. These people also used other aliases. They were probably laughing out loud and giving each other high fives while signing the ARs for millions of pesos.
Assistant Majority Leader and Zambales 1st District Rep. Jay Khonghun and Deputy Majority Leader and La Union 1st District Rep. Paolo Ortega V announced the P1-million bounty recently. This should help unravel the mystery behind this scam in the second highest executive office.
Earlier, Antipolo 2nd District Rep. Romeo Acop had asked an official of the Commission on Audit’s intelligence and confidential funds audit office if she was aware that among the signatories of checks for millions in the OVP’s confidential funds bore the name of ‘Mary Grace Piattos’, pointing out that the name sounded spurious.
In the digital presentation during the hearing of the House committee, led by Manila 3rd District Rep. Joel Chua, a document in one slide was shown indicating a signed AR bearing such name (with a signature) and with a Dec. 30 date, receiving payment as reward.
Rep. Ortega flagged the recurring fictitious names and repetitive handwriting on the receipts. It’s about time, he said, for those responsible for the fake names to surface and explain the circumstances behind the obvious scam.
For the lawmakers, the P1-million bounty underscores the importance of resolving the issue and ensuring accountability in government spending.
The ARs presented to the COA and the Quad Committee bore not just similar handwriting, the same color of ballpens and the same set of signatories. There were a total of 776 ARs, 302 of which bore “unreadable names,” with five “repeated names”, according to the lawmakers who examined the documents.
Given the scale of what appears to be large-scale embezzlement of taxpayer’s money at the OVP, shouldn’t the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) be asked to conduct a thorough probe of the matter and file the necessary charges against those who perpetrated the crime?
