PIECES of evidence attached to the Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte included documents showing other fictitious recipients of her confidential funds, who are also surnamed “Piatos,” an administration lawmaker said yesterday.
La Union Rep. Paolo Ortega said the impeachment complaint’s annexes show two other names, seemingly linked to Mary Grace Piattos, one “Pia Piatos-Lim” and one “Renan Piatos” who have only one “T” in their middle and last names, respectively.
“The special treatment to the Piattos family is too much,” he said in Filipino. “There’s Mary Grace Piattos, Pia Piatos-Lim and Renan Piatos. What makes them qualified to receive confidential funds?”
Another dubious name, “Xiaome Ocho,” also appears on the list of the OVP’s confidential fund recipients, Ortega said.
He said the recipient was apparently named after a Xiaomi cellphone model from 2018.
“We thought there was only one ridiculous name in the list of confidential funds recipients but it seems there’s one family of Piattoses and another one name after a cellphone model,” he said.
Among specific acts cited in the Articles of Impeachment was Duterte’s alleged malversation of a total of P612.5 million in confidential funds as vice president and as education secretary. She is accused of questionable disbursements under the Office of the Vice President, worth P254.8 million, and linked to 1,322 fictitious beneficiaries who had no birth records, and another P43.2 million in alleged ghost transactions involving 405 fake names under the confidential funds of the Department of Education.
Duterte was officially impeached on February 5 after 215 lawmakers endorsed the verified impeachment complaint filed by the majority bloc, exceeding by 113 signatories the constitutional requirement of one-third of all members of the House of Representatives, which currently has 306 members.
The Articles of Impeachment, which accuses Duterte of culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption and other high crimes, was transmitted to the Senate also on February 5. Trial may start in July.
Duterte last month filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to nullify the impeachment complaint against her, with the Senate as among respondents.
The Senate, in a manifestation dated March 6, asked the tribunal that it be excused from submitting a comment on Duterte’s petition as it will be the one to handle the impeachment proceedings.
“Respondent Senate, which has the sole power to try and decide all impeachment cases under the Constitution, cannot therefore possibly make a comment on the petition, and thus, asks the Honorable Court that it be excused from submitting the comment,” the Senate said in the manifestation ad cautelam filed by its counsel, Maria Valentina Santana-Cruz.
The Senate also said a reading of Duterte’s petition showed it has “actually no allegations against respondent Senate.”
In her February 18 petition, Duterte said the Articles of Impeachment violated the constitutional one-year ban on filing impeachment complaints.
The Senate also asked that the manifestation be admitted in lieu of the required comment and be considered as compliance with the en banc resolution dated February 25 that asked it to comment.
At the House, Ortega said that like Mary Grace Piattos, Pia and Renan do not have any records of birth, marriage, or death from the PSA.
“We hope they didn’t use this fund to buy a whole warehouse of snacks. However, what’s even more alarming is the fact that we don’t know where the money went,” he said.
Mary Grace Piattos, one of the fictitious names appearing in many acknowledgment receipts submitted by the Office of the Vice President to the Commission on Audit (COA) as liquidation documents for Duterte’s confidential funds, does not exist based on the records of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
In a certification dated Nov. 25, 2024 submitted to the House committee on good government and public accountability, the PSA said any search for Mary Grace Piattos in its Civil Registry System database on the certificate of live birth, certificate of marriage, and certificate of death yielded a “negative” response.
The name Piattos has been the subject of ridicule because the first name Mary Grace could have been taken from the name of a popular restaurant, while the surname Piattos is a known local potato chips snack brand.
Piattos’ name was among those that appeared in 158 acknowledgment receipts that were attached to the liquidation reports submitted by the OVP to the COA to liquidate the P125 million in confidential funds that it allegedly spent in just 11 days in 2022. – With Raymond Africa and Ashzel Hachero
Out of the P125 million, the COA has disallowed P73 million and has asked the vice president and two other officials to return to public coffers.
In the acknowledgement receipts, Piattos was supposed to have received several checks, of which one was for P70,000, one of the largest shares of confidential funds disbursed by the OVP in December 2022.