Existing guidelines on confidential and intelligence funds do not specify whether agents or informants can use aliases in supporting liquidation records, former state auditor Atty. Roderick Wamil testified before the impeachment court on Wednesday.
Appearing as a witness in the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte, Wamil clarified that COA-Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Joint Circular No. 2015-01 contains no explicit rule either permitting or prohibiting fictitious names on expenditure forms.
The subject came up after Senator Erwin Tulfo questioned Wamil on whether the circular mandates agencies to reveal the real identities of individuals listed as recipients of Office of the Vice President (OVP) confidential funds—pointing to suspicious names on submitted documents such as “Mary Grace Piattos,” “Chippy McDonald,” and “Mickey Mouse.”
When asked if the lack of a explicit prohibition meant aliases were acceptable, Wamil noted the rule’s ambiguity:
”It is neither allowed nor prohibited.”
Addressing why auditors made no effort to verify the real identities behind the names, Wamil emphasized the scope of their mandate under existing guidelines:
”Our audit is a compliance audit. Whatever is provided in the circular serves as the basis of our audit.”
Senator Bam Aquino pursued the matter further, inquiring if past COA regulations had ever authorized code names or if state auditors fundamentally expect listed names to represent actual people.
Wamil recalled that older circulars similarly lacked provisions on aliases, adding that auditors can only examine paper submissions and lack the mechanism to independently verify if a name is genuine or assumed.
However, when Aquino directly asked if the baseline expectation for audit documents is that they reflect real individuals, Wamil agreed that it was. The auditor’s testimony forms part of the impeachment court’s broader probe into how the OVP documented and liquidated its confidential spending.