Mary Grace Piattos reportedly received part of Duterte’s confidential funds in 2022, but she does not exist in the Philippine Statistics Authority’s records.

MANILA, Philippines — A search for Mary Grace Piattos, among the alleged recipients of Vice President Sara Duterte’s confidential funds, yielded no results in the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) database.

The agency sent a certificate of its findings to Manila 3rd District Rep. Joel Chuawhose parliamentary committee on good government is investigating Vice President Sara Duterte’s alleged misuse of public funds.

According to the letter dated November 25 but only published on Tuesday December 3, Piattos has no birth, marriage or death certificate with the PSA.

“If additional information such as the name of the subject’s parents, date and location of the marital status event can be provided, we can continue the search and be able to verify whether the marital status document is available in the database”, we can read in the certification. signed by the National Statistician and Registrar General, Dennis Mapa.

During the Congressional investigation, it was discovered that a certain Mary Grace Piattos had signed an acknowledgment from the Office of the Vice President (OVP) on December 30, 2022, indicating that she had received a portion of the 125 million pesos in secret funds of the agency that year.

This confidential fund of 125 million pesos was controversial because (1) the public learned late of the transfer of the money to the OVP (Duterte’s predecessor, Leni Robredo, who prepared that year’s budget, did not request secret funds), (2) the huge fund was sold out in 11 daysand (3) the Audit Commission later refused 73 million pesos of the total due to “failure to submit documents proving successful information collection/and/or surveillance.”

The strangeness of the name “Mary Grace Piattos” later raised alarms among lawmakers because it was a combination of the names of a popular restaurant and a snack brand.

The Good Government Committee even offered a bounty of one million pesos for any information leading to the discovery of Piattos’ identity.

Other strange names that appeared in the OVP acknowledgments included Fernando Tempura, Reymunda Jane Nova and Carlos Miguel Oishi.

Play video

“If we see something wrong with one, it is not an exaggeration that the others are the same,” said Jude Acidre, deputy leader of the parliamentary majority. “We have a basis to question and examine whether the other receipts are also similar, just as false as the acknowledgment signed by Mary Grace Piattos.”

“When you submit documents to the COA that include someone named Mary Grace Piattos justifying certain expenses, but it turns out they don’t exist, there appears to be an element of fraud,” added Geraldine Roman, Representative of the 1st District of Bataan. – Rappler.com