Names bearing a striking resemblance to those of prominent Filipino public figures appeared on acknowledgment receipts the Office of the Vice President submitted to the Commission on Audit’s Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office, documents that were laid before the Senate impeachment court as records of who collected money from the office’s confidential fund disbursements.
A receipt for P500,000, booked for medical and food aid, carried the name Clarisse Hontiveros — echoing the surname of Senator Risa Hontiveros, one of the senator-judges hearing the case. A separate entry recorded P120,000 released under Jose Diokno Jr. for the purchase of information, a name that recalls the Diokno family long associated with Philippine law and public service.
The receipts covered a spread of stated purposes and amounts. Another P500,000 disbursement for medical and food aid was logged under Feonna Villegas, while P250,000 for supplies appeared under Heart Santiago. Beth Revilla was recorded as receiving P50,000 for the purchase of information, and a receipt under Ang Ongpauco listed P50,000 for the same category. Ralph Josh Bacon was shown collecting P150,000.
A further document recorded P140,000 under the name Pia Piatos, again tagged as payment for information. That surname has drawn repeated attention in the proceedings for its likeness to “Mary Grace Piattos,” a supposed recipient the Philippine Statistics Authority earlier reported had no civil registry record.
The recurrence of senator-sounding names is not new to the case. La Union Rep. Paolo Ortega V flagged the pattern last year, noting that surnames matching those of sitting senators — Revilla and Hontiveros among them — turned up among the office’s listed beneficiaries. He characterized the entries as irregularities too glaring to overlook, pointing out that many could not be matched to official birth, marriage, or death records held by the PSA.
The identities on the receipts anchor one of the prosecution’s main arguments under the impeachment article covering the alleged misuse of P612.5 million in confidential funds handled by the OVP and the Department of Education during Vice President Sara Duterte’s tenure. The PSA has reported that 1,322 of the 1,992 people named as OVP confidential-fund recipients have no birth records, alongside 405 of the 677 recipients tied to DepEd’s funds.
Whether the receipts will stand as proof of wrongdoing is still contested. Former COA-Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office state auditor Roderick Wamil testified that the joint COA-Department of Budget and Management circular on confidential and intelligence funds neither permits nor bars the use of aliases or code names, leaving unresolved whether the unusual signatures amount to a breach of audit rules.
