MANILA – Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio is set to address the impeachment case against her today, two days following the transmission of the complaint from the House of Representatives to the Senate.
In a media advisory on Thursday, the Office of the Vice President said that Duterte-Carpio will deliver a press statement this morning at the OVP Central Office located in Mandaluyong City.
Panay News has been attempting to contact Duterte-Carpio since Wednesday for a comment, but no response has been received as of the latest update. However, in an interview with News 5, she indicated that she would provide her reaction only after reviewing the verified complaint.
“Mahirap ako mag-react pag hindi ko nabasa kasi kung ano sinabi nila. Gusto ko mabasa kung ano yung statement ng House,” Duterte-Carpio said.
The impeachment complaint stemmed from the House good government and public accountability panel’s inquiry on the use of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) under Duterte-Carpio’s leadership.
The inquiry found that the two offices submitted acknowledgement receipts with wrong dates, signatories with no birth records, unnamed signatories and non-readable names of signatories to liquidate disbursed confidential funds to the Commission of Audit (COA).
It also found that the COA issued a notice of disallowance on the OVP’s use of P73 million confidential funds within 11 days in 2022. At least P69 million of the P73 million disallowed involved the following: P10 million for reward payment; P34.857 million for payment of reward (various goods); and P24.93 million for payment of reward (medicines).
The COA said the OVP did not submit documents showing the success of information gathering and/or surveillance activities to support the acknowledgment receipts for around P69 million of payments of rewards in cash, various goods, and medicines.
Likewise, COA said that P3.5 million of the disallowed P73 million “were used for payment for tables, chairs, desktop computers and printers without specifying that they were intended for the confidential operations/activities undertaken by the OVP, non-compliant with the requirement of Item 4.8.4 of the Joint Circular governing use of confidential fund.”/PN
