Members of the House prosecution panel said the testimony of former Office of the Vice President (OVP) special disbursing officer (SDO) Gina Acosta in the Senate impeachment trial revealed the direct accountability of Vice President Sara Duterte in the ‘ghost process,’ which allegedly resulted in the mishandling of P125 million confidential funds.
House prosecutor Manila Rep. Joel Chua said the Acosta confirmed that Duterte ordered her to hand off the cash to then-Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group chief Col. Raymund Dante Lachica.
This even if Acosta did not have any authority to disburse the said fund.
‘It turned out yesterday [Tuesday] that Ms. Gina Acosta’s role was merely ministerial-essentially just a signatory-because she did not understand the plan and simply handled withdrawals,’ Chua said in Filipino in a statement.
The House prosecution also questioned the multiple roles of Lachica in the disbursement of the fund, which House trial spokesperson Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong described as a ‘ghost process’ because of issues in its ‘chain of control.’
The lawmaker flagged Lachica for not only providing inputs for the planned activities, but also handled the funds and supplied documents concerning their use.
The said issues, the House prosecution team, said has made it difficult for state auditors to determine how the fund was spent.
However, it noted that they must still present more pieces of evidence to convict Duterte under Article 1 of the impeachment complaint against her.
Under the said Article, Duterte was accused of misusing P612.5 million in confidential funds.
Of the said amount, P500 million was released to the OVP from December 2022 to September 2023 and P112.5 million released to the Department of Education while Duterte was education secretary in 2023.