MANILA — Nearly two-thirds of the names listed as recipients of confidential funds from the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and Department of Education (DepEd) could not be found in the country’s civil registry, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) told the Senate on Monday.
PSA Assistant National Statistician Marizza Grande testified that 1,685, or about 63 percent, of the 2,669 names submitted to the agency for verification had no corresponding birth, marriage or death records in its database.
The finding emerged during the 22nd day of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio’s impeachment trial, where senators are examining allegations surrounding her use of confidential funds while heading the OVP and, previously, the DepEd.
Grande said 1,287 of the 1,992 names listed as OVP confidential fund payees could not be matched with PSA civil registry records.
For DepEd, 398 of the 677 names submitted for verification similarly yielded no matches.
The PSA conducted the verification upon the request of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability, according to Grande.
She said some names caught her attention because they appeared unusual, prompting her to personally conduct another check against the agency’s database.
“Nag-run through lang po ako doon sa mga listahan and I find it unusual because unique po ‘yong names na ito and conducted re-verification using the database,” she explained.
Among the names flagged were “Beverly Claire Pampano” and “Matthew N. Keso,” whose surnames resemble food-related terms.
Other names presented during the proceedings included “Tomas Panda,” “Timon Angelo Pusa” and “Tina Maching.”
Duterte-Carpio’s camp had previously maintained that some names appearing in confidential fund documents could have been aliases used to protect the identities of confidential informants.
The PSA verification also produced matches that raised further questions about the payee lists.
Grande said 37 names corresponded to individuals with death certificates in the PSA database, including “Fortunato Salig,” “Emilio Sagan” and “Rodolfo Traya.”
She stressed, however, that the matches do not prove that the persons listed as confidential fund recipients were already dead when the payments were supposedly made. The findings establish only that identical names appeared in the PSA’s death records.
The agency also found 25 payee names matching civil registry records of minors, some corresponding to children as young as one year old, Grande said.
The PSA findings were presented as part of the Senate’s examination of allegations that Duterte-Carpio misused confidential funds during her tenure as Vice President and Education secretary./PN
