PhilHealth: 92% of P15B in ‘stolen’ funds already ‘liquidated’

The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) on Tuesday said 92% of the P15 billion worth of funds  allegedly stolen from the state insurer by some of its officials had been “liquidated.”

“Sa totoo lang po, hindi po nawawala, andiyan lang,” PhilHealth president Dante Gierran said at a Palace news conference.  "Sa ngayon po 92% na ang liquidated. So [kakaunti] na lang po [ang hindi pa].”

A former employee revealed last August that members of the PhilHealth executive committee pocketed some P15 billion in funds through several fraudulent schemes.

These schemes included cash advances, the use of the Interim Reimbursement Mechanism (IRM), and the continuous procurement of IT equipment the agency already has, according to PhilHealth’s former anti-fraud legal officer Thorrsson Montes Keith.

Gierran recalled that his predecessor Ricardo Morales was instructed by lawmakers investigating the supposed anomalies in PhilHealth to account for the “stolen” funds.

“I will not allow that iyong pera ng Pilipino nawala. Galing ako sa NBI po, hindi puwedeng mangyari sa akin iyan,” said Gierran, a former director of the National Bureau of Investigation.

Last August, President Rodrigo Duterte formed an inter-agency body to probe the corruption allegations in PhilHealth.

The panel, through the NBI, later filed criminal complaints against Morales and other officials over the alleged anomalies in the IRM.

The Department of Justice-led task force has said more charges will be filed in the future. — RSJ, GMA News