Philippines audit: billions lost in final Arroyo years

The graft-tainted latter years of ex-president Gloria Arroyo cost the Philippines at least Dh9 billion through misuse of state funds.

MANILA // The Philippines lost Dh9 billion through misuse of state funds and assets during the latter years of graft-tainted ex-president Gloria Arroyo's rule, government auditors said.

The Commission on Audit highlighted anomalies that mostly occurred in the 2007-2009 period in its investigation of more than 61,000 government agencies last year.

More than 4,000 cases of unauthorised expenses, unaccounted for cash advances, uncollected duties, fictitious claims, missing assets, or abandoned projects, cost the government 101.82bn pesos (Dh9bn), said the report, first posted on the commission's website on Saturday.

The total is equivalent to 5.6 per cent of the country's budget this year.

Its conditional cash transfer programme, where poor families get monthly stipends in exchange for keeping their children in school, could not account for 3.77bn pesos.

Two state banks lent large sums unsecured by hard collateral, while Manila airport left 21 abandoned aircraft parked in an area exposed to natural elements, leading to their deterioration, despite being given funding to house them.

Among the biggest items were 1.86bn pesos in cash advances to two government treasurers in the province of Maguindanao and 1.12bn pesos in payments to "spurious" suppliers to a Muslim self-rule area.

Chief state auditor Grace Tan said in a letter sent to Manila newspapers on Saturday that the audit covered items mostly relating to accounts before 2010, when Aquino was elected to office on an anticorruption platform.

Aquino has asked a special antigraft prosecutor to file criminal charges against people deemed responsible for 744 of the cases, the auditors said.

The other cases are under investigation.

Agence France-Presse