Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson urged the Commission on Audit (COA) on Wednesday, August 5, to expand its oversight rules on confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) to ensure genuine government accountability.
Addressing COA auditor Roderick Wamil during a Vice President’s impeachment trial interjection, Lacson criticized the agency’s reliance on paper-based compliance audits under its existing Joint Memorandum Circular.
Drawing from his extensive experience in law enforcement and intelligence operations, the senator argued that document checks alone are insufficient to verify whether funds are used legitimately or if listed payees are real individuals using aliases.
“Why are you limited to paper audits? Don’t you have physical audits? It seems your current auditing system is lacking. How would you know if the one signing the acknowledgment receipts is a legitimate person if you cannot determine if the person behind the alias is a real person?” Lacson asked.
“You may want to recommend an amendment to your Joint Memorandum Circular. Your current auditing process is lacking. In fairness to the concerned offices or persons being audited, due process must be complete,” he added. “If you rely on documents only based on your joint memorandum circular, you don’t go beyond that.”
Wamil, who spent nearly a decade with COA’s Intelligence and Confidential Fund Audit Office (ICFAO) auditing agencies like the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and Department of Education (DepEd), explained that current procedures only check for a “causal link” between an informer’s tip and an operational outcome.
Lacson countered that the audit guidelines lack clear standards for verifying operational success, proposing that after-surveillance or after-intelligence reports serve as proper evidence.
“Would an after-surveillance or after-intelligence report of a particular agent suffice to be considered as evidence of success? I’m not referring to the entire operation. But if you conduct surveillance and prepare an after-surveillance report, would you consider that as an evidence of success?” Lacson noted.
Additionally, Lacson stressed that state auditors cannot thoroughly inspect classified operations without high-level security clearances.
Because true identities behind operational aliases remain classified until a project is declassified, auditors without proper clearances are left incapable of assessing the full context of an intelligence project.
“How can you audit properly if you do not know the nature of the intelligence project or operation?” Lacson pointed out.