In the 10 years that he audited over 30 government agencies’ confidential and intelligence fund expenses, Commission on Audit (COA) auditor Roderick Wamil said it was only during Vice President Sara Duterte’s time that he saw a department won’t submit official receipts, relying only on the submission of acknowledge receipts (ARs), during liquidation.

At the continuation of the impeachment trial of the Vice President, Wamil told senator-judges that Duterte’s offices—the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education (DepEd)—only submitted ARs that were not supported by documents substantiating that payment was made.

According to Wamil, who was with the COA’s Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office (ICFAO), they needed documents that were supposed to prove to state auditors that the confidential funds requested by the OVP and DepEd for informants reached the intended beneficiaries.

“I cannot say it is a standard practice since this is the first time that they submitted purely ARs only to COA,” Wamil said in response to Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan’s question.

When Pangilinan pressed if it was his first time to see that only ARs and no sales invoice, no official receipts were submitted, Wamil responded: “Yes, and they submitted a huge number of ARs.”

Asked whether the state auditing body can ascertain that the OVP’s confidential funds for the fourth quarter of 2022 and first three quarters of 2023 were indeed used to buy medicines supposedly as payment of rewards to confidential informants, he replied in the negative.

“If the official receipt or sales invoice had been submitted to us, we would have been able to tell. However, since only an acknowledgement receipt (AR) was submitted, we cannot determine this based on the document alone,” Wamil said. Wamil was part of the ICFAO from 2014 to 2024.

Also, Wamil claimed that the Office of the Vice President refused to comply with the Audit Observation Memorandum (AOM) when confronted about their “unusual” spending.

An AOM is a written notice sent by state auditors to a government agency if they find some errors, missing papers, or other irregularities they find during an audit.

The meeting took place, but Wamil said COA refused to accede to an audit query, being asked by the camp of the Vice President.

“Yes, we did not agree because it’s not in the Joint (Memorandum) Circular, Your Honor,” Wamil said again in response to Pangilinan, confirming they will be violating it if they agreed to an audit query only.

But Wamil confirmed the camp of the vice president rejected the AOM the COA issued.

“That’s the first time that happened, Your Honor,” Wamil said.

“So that’s unusual?” Pangilinan asked. To which Wamil said: “Yes. That’s unusual.”

When Sen. Risa Hontiveros asked Wamil if COA was able to confirm if the supposed “Mary Grace Piattos” who received P70,000 worth of medicines as reward was suffering from any illness, he replied in the negative.

“I wouldn’t know because there were no documents submitted to us,” he said.

When she asked if there is any way the ICFAO can find out what her illness was since the money are considered public funds, Wamil replied that the COA “can make inquiries."

“However, since our work is document-based, we can only know what is stated in the documents,” he said.

“Yes. We are authorized (to make inquiries) under Section 6.2.3.7 of the Joint Circular,” Wamil further said.