VP Sara's camp failed to poke holes in COA witness' testimony —Prosecution

The camp of Vice President Sara Duterte failed to poke holes on the testimony of prosecution witness, state auditor and lawyer Roderick Wamil, who testified that the Vice President’s office disbursed P129 million of confidential funds without documentary evidence, the House prosecution panel said Tuesday.

House private prosecutor Benjamin Tolosa, Jr. and prosecutor Terry Ridon of Bicol Saro party-list noted that the cross-examination conducted by defense counsel Michael Poa on Wamil did not dispute the COA official’s testimony on undocumented P129 million OVP confidential fund disbursements, on top of the P112.5 million DepEd confidential fund disbursements in 2023 or during her time as DepEd chief, which also lacked supporting documents.

“A lot of the points put forward during the direct examination were not discussed during the cross examination, such as the multiple certifications issued by the Vice President as head of the agency for the confidential fund liquidation of OVP and DepEd [as submitted to COA]. They (defense) didn’t even touch upon this issue, kaya maliwanag hindi ito nabutasan,” Tolosa said in a press conference.

(Clearly, they were not able to poke holes on the testimony of our witness.)

“They did not discuss if there was indeed, a purchase for medical supplies [using confidential funds], or how they were able to use P125 million of their 2022 confidential fund in 11 days, which include rental of safehouses amounting around P2 million per day. Nasaan ‘yung official receipts? Nasaan ‘yung sales invoice? Kasi ‘yun ang kailangan mong patunayan,” Tolosa added.

(Where are the receipts? Where are the sales invoices? Because those are what they need to prove.)

Ridon, for his part, said Wamil’s testimony for the last two days which flagged undocumented confidential fund disbursements of the OVP and DepEd under the Vice President and Education chief clearly established that the Vice President did not disburse the hundreds of millions of confidential fund properly.

Ridon cited Item 8.3 of Joint Circular No. 2015-01 which governs the release, use, and audit of confidential and intelligence funds which states that “failure to liquidate public funds upon formal demand may create a rebuttable presumption that the unaccounted money was converted to personal use or benefit.”

“The burden of evidence is already on the defense. The presumption exists today and for as long as it is unrebutted,” Ridon said.

Likewise, Ridon cited the Notice of Disallowance issued by COA on OVP’s disbursement of P73 million of its confidential funds in 2022, which is already a final decision.

“This is a scam, similar to the agricultural fund scam. It is similar to the Napoles scam,” Ridon added.

Ridon was pertaining to the fertilizer fund scam was among the major corruption controversies that hounded the Arroyo administration.

Wamil is a prosecution witness for Article 1, which accuses the Vice President of committing impeachable offenses due to systematic, misappropriation, and irregular liquidation of confidential funds amounting to P500 million released to the OVP and P112.5 million released to the Department of Education (DepEd) during her tenure as Education chief. —VAL, GMA News