The 473 soldiers and police officers assigned to guard Vice President Sara Duterte were already drawing their pay from separate government allocations, House prosecution counsel Mae Divinagracia told the impeachment court, casting doubt on why the Office of the Vice President needed P500 million in confidential funds for the same purpose.
Divinagracia raised the point on the trial’s 18th day, August 25, 2026, while conducting the direct examination of OVP Assistant Chief of Staff Lemuel Ortonio, whom the impeachment court had declared a hostile witness. Her questioning fell under Article I of the impeachment complaint, which centers on the alleged misappropriation of P612.5 million in secret funds—P500 million channeled through the OVP and P112.5 million through the Department of Education.
She contended that the kinds of dangers typically cited to justify confidential spending, including threats from the New People’s Army and terrorist organizations, already fell within the mandate of agencies funded to track them. According to her, the intelligence budgets of both the AFP and the PNP already accounted for such monitoring.
“The P500 million bought protection the Vice President already had, against threats the AFP and the PNP were already paid billions to watch,” Divinagracia said.
She pressed the same argument in Filipino, telling the court that no vice president in the country’s history had ever been afforded a security arrangement on that scale. “473 sundalo at pulis na ang nagbabantay sa kanya, sahod ng Republika mula sa ibang pondo. Walang Pangalawang Pangulo sa kasaysayan ang nagkaroon ng ganito,” she said—stating that the personnel guarding Duterte were paid by the Republic out of other funds, and that the setup was unprecedented for the office.
The figure Divinagracia cited exceeds earlier tallies of Duterte’s protective detail. When the security arrangement drew scrutiny in 2024, the PNP placed the count at 389 personnel—358 soldiers and 31 police officers—after 75 officers were pulled from the detail and reassigned.
The dispute over the confidential funds has already reached into the ranks of Duterte’s former security staff. Col. Raymund Dante Lachica, who once headed the unit guarding the Vice President, was reassigned to the Philippine Army in October 2025 while facing an Ombudsman case tied to the alleged misuse of OVP and DepEd money. Testimony at earlier hearings alleged that Lachica received P125 million in confidential funds in 2022 on Duterte’s orders, while his DepEd counterpart, Col. Dennis Nolasco, was said to have obtained P37.5 million the following year. Duterte has rejected the allegations, describing the proceedings against her as a politically driven effort to justify her removal.
