Honasan, Rio say DICT’s confidential fund is ‘lawful,’ ‘legitimate’

Officials of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) on Friday said that the spending of the agency’s P300-million confidential fund was within the bounds of the law.

DICT Secretary Gregorio Honasan II and Undersecretary Eliseo Rio Jr. issued a joint statement “to assure the public that the disbursement of the Confidential Expense was lawful and legitimate.”

“We would like to stress that the Confidential Expense is a line item allocated under the 2019 GAA that went through the rigorous process of approval by both houses of Congress and ultimately by the President himself,” the joint statement read.

Honasan and Rio said the issuance of a joint statement is to “put to rest any question on the integrity of the DICT.”

This, after concerns arose from Rio’s resignation from his post, saying his authority was by-passed when the planning process on the use of confidential fund was limited only to Honasan and the “people he brought with him.”

The senior DICT undersecretary has since clarified that he is not alleging any anomaly in the department and that his resignation was prompted being kept out over how the agency spent the confidential funds.

“To set the record straight, Undersecretary Rio never mentioned any anomaly in the disbursement of the Confidential Expense of the DICT,” the joint statement said.

“His statements about the need for Confidential Expenses may have been misinterpreted, and it is emphasized that these were his own personal views and not that of the Department,” the statement read.

The DICT heads also emphasized that it was Rio who proposed the inclusion of the Confidential Expense item in the 2019 General Appropriations Act (GAA) and he also signed the Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) for it.

“Let it also be clarified that Undersecretary Rio's resignation was due to personal reasons, and not due to any rift with the Secretary, nor to any anomaly in the Confidential Expense,” the statement said.

The leads of the DICT further emphasized that the use of confidential funds is for lawful monitoring and surveillance of systems and network infrastructure only.

“It is not used for the monitoring of individuals and persons since that is not part of the Department's mandate,” the statement said.

“We would like to emphasize that part of the mandate of DICT is to ensure and protect the privacy, security, and confidentiality of the Filipino people in ICT-related matters, as well as to ensure the security of critical ICT infrastructures of our country,” the statement said.

These cybersecurity threat monitoring activities on our country's ICT systems and network infrastructure have a clear and direct impact on national security, according to Honasan and Rio.

“We again assure the public that the Confidential Expense was legitimately used for our country's cybersecurity and the protection of our national security. Rest assured, that proper procedures were followed, and the disbursements were regular, and duly liquidated in accordance with applicable accounting and auditing laws, rules, and regulations,” the statement said.

“The returns of the Confidential Fund investment will soon be felt by our people because it will move us even closer towards a cybersafe Philippines,” the DICT heads said. —LDF, GMA News