Sara Duterte’s move to nix confidential funds an ’empty gesture’ — lawmaker

House deputy minority leader Rep. France Castro (ACT Teachers) also renewed calls to investigate the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and other civilian agencies’ use of confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs) in previous years.

This comes after Duterte told reporters in an ambush interview on Saturday that “there was no proposal” for the OVP to have confidential funds in 2025. Government agencies were asked to submit their proposed budgets to the Department of Budget and Management before April 22.

“Why should she request for confidential funds when her office is not mandated to have such funds?” Castro said.

The lawmaker added that Duterte may be “afraid” of another rejection from Congress, which last year realigned the OVP and the DepEd’s combined request of P650 million in CIFs to agencies focused on manning the West Philippine Sea.

Castro said Duterte has not yet “satisfactorily explained” the P125 million-worth of confidential funds that the OVP spent in 11 days in 2022.

On top of this, Castro added that Duterte still has to account how she spent her confidential funds in 2023.

“She is not off the hook yet,” the lawmaker said.

Constitutionality questioned

During last year’s budget deliberations, lawmakers surfaced the OVP’s P125 million confidential fund expenditure in 2022 and criticized this as highly irregular as Congress did not allot any confidential funds to the OVP for that year.

Commission on Audit documents later showed that the Office of the President (OP) transferred the amount from its contingency funds to the OVP in December 2022. Duterte has cited this as her basis for defending the legality of the transfer.

This fund transfer is now the subject of a pending Supreme Court petition that alleges the OP’s release of P125 million funds to the OVP was unconstitutional due to the absence of a line item for confidential funds in the 2022 General Appropriations Act.

In May, Duterte asked the SC to dismiss the petitions assailing the P125 million confidential fund’s constitutionality, saying that the issue “does not constitute a justiciable controversy.”

Last year, lawmakers called for a reasonable cap on the use of confidential funds after COA reports from 2016 to 2022 show that the local government of Davao City under then-Mayor Duterte had received a staggering P2.697 billion in confidential funds in total or P460 million per year.

Confidential funds, as the name implies, cover expenses linked to confidential surveillance tasks within government agencies. Similarly, intelligence funds are for intelligence expenses related to information-gathering activities of uniformed and military personnel and intelligence practitioners.

Auditing CIFs is dependent on the transparent and accurate submissions of government agencies with these funds. However, a 2015 joint circular requires these entities to present a detailed physical and financial plan when requesting such funds. — Cristina Chi