A decade-long veteran of the Commission on Audit (COA) testified at the Senate impeachment trial that the confidential and intelligence fund expenditures submitted by Vice President Sara Duterte’s offices were unlike anything he had encountered across more than 30 government agencies.
Roderick Wamil, who served with COA’s Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office (ICFAO) from 2014 to 2024, revealed that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) submitted liquidation reports relying solely on acknowledgement receipts (ARs) without basic supporting documents like sales invoices or official receipts.
When questioned by Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan on whether this constituted standard procedure, Wamil highlighted the anomaly.
“I cannot say it is a standard practice since this is the first time that they submitted purely ARs only to COA,” Wamil said.
Asked by Pangilinan to confirm if this was indeed his first time encountering an agency submitting massive volumes of ARs without accompanying invoices or receipts, the auditor agreed.
“Yes, and they submitted a huge number of ARs,” Wamil responded.
This lack of documentation prevented auditors from verifying whether public money—such as funds from late 2022 through 2023 allegedly spent on medicines as rewards for confidential informants—actually reached intended recipients.
“If the official receipt or sales invoice had been submitted to us, we would have been able to tell. However, since only an acknowledgement receipt (AR) was submitted, we cannot determine this based on the document alone,” Wamil said.
Wamil also disclosed that the Vice President’s team took the unprecedented step of outright rejecting an Audit Observation Memorandum (AOM) issued by COA regarding these financial irregularities.
After auditors declined an out-of-bounds request to handle the issue via an informal audit query, the Vice President’s camp refused the official memorandum.
“Yes, we did not agree because it’s not in the Joint (Memorandum) Circular, Your Honor,” Wamil said regarding the proposed audit query.
“That’s the first time that happened, Your Honor,” Wamil stated on the rejection of the AOM.
When Pangilinan pressed, “So that’s unusual?”, Wamil confirmed:
“Yes. That’s unusual.”
Addressing questions from Senator Risa Hontiveros regarding a specific informant named “Mary Grace Piattos”—who was purportedly given ₱70,000 worth of medicines—Wamil admitted that COA could not even verify if the individual had a medical condition warranting the expense.
“I wouldn’t know because there were no documents submitted to us,” he said.
While acknowledging that COA possesses the authority to conduct deeper inquiries, Wamil explained the constraints of their current workflow.
“However, since our work is document-based, we can only know what is stated in the documents,” he said. “Yes. We are authorized (to make inquiries) under Section 6.2.3.7 of the Joint Circular.”