Every instruction to move the Office of the Vice President’s confidential money traced back to a single person, according to Malacañang’s reading of what a former disbursing officer told the Senate impeachment court — Vice President Sara Duterte herself.
That interpretation followed the appearance of Gina Acosta, once the OVP’s special disbursing officer, who was presented by the prosecution as a hostile witness during the trial’s confidential funds phase. The Palace concluded from her account that authority over the releases originated at the top of the office rather than with the staff who processed them. On that basis, it suggested the proceedings had, to a degree, already made the case that the vice president mishandled the secret money.
Acosta’s account centered on a P125-million tranche the OVP received in December 2022. Under questioning by private prosecutor Amando Ligutan, she stood by an earlier statement she had given to the House panel in November 2024: that the vice president directed her to release that sum to Colonel Raymund Dante Lachica, who then led the Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group. The transfer has drawn scrutiny because Lachica was not organic OVP personnel and did not carry a fidelity bond, an arrangement that ordinarily bars an officer from handling such disbursements.
Over the course of her testimony, the scope widened beyond that first release. Acosta acknowledged turning over a total of P500 million in OVP confidential funds to Lachica across several tranches during 2022 and 2023, telling the court she disbursed the money on Duterte’s orders and pointing to Lachica’s security expertise as the reason, even though the governing rules did not permit it. She told senator-judges she bears sole accountability for the P500 million, while also stating she had no direct knowledge of how the cash was ultimately spent or who the people behind unfamiliar names on the acknowledgment receipts actually were.
Senator-judges pressed her on how carefully she had examined the liquidation paperwork Lachica submitted. Acosta repeatedly answered that her role was limited to releasing the funds and that Lachica was the one who carried out the programs they were meant to cover. She said she leaned on his assurances and the documents he handed over when she prepared the liquidation report, despite noticing that some receipts lacked dates, names, or signatures.
The dispute over who should answer for the funds is not new to the Palace. Earlier in the trial, Malacañang objected to the position that only a disbursing officer — and not the head of the agency — could be held responsible for how confidential money was used, a stance the Palace characterized as among the most damaging remarks it had heard from the bench. Article I of the impeachment complaint accuses Duterte of misusing confidential funds at the OVP and the Department of Education, allegations her defense team has rejected as baseless.
