House Deputy Majority Leader and La Union 1st District Rep. Paolo Ortega on Sunday, April 6, disclosed a new batch of suspicious names allegedly tied to Vice President Sara Duterte’s use of confidential funds—raising further concerns of possible misuse of public money.
Among the new names listed in Duterte’s liquidation reports are Honeylet Camille Sy, Feonna Biong, Feonna Villegas, Fiona Ranitez, Ellen Magellan, Erwin Q. Ewan, Gary Tanada, and Joel Linangan. Ortega said Duterte submitted these to the Commission on Audit (COA).
Four of the names—Sy, Biong, Villegas, and Linangan—were supposedly recipients of the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) ₱500 million confidential fund. The rest were linked to the Department of Education’s (DepEd) ₱112.5 million fund during Duterte’s two-year stint as secretary until July 2024.
“These names sound like they were pulled from showbiz and movies. The repeated use of fake names is no longer funny,” Ortega said in Filipino. He warned that the trend points to a possible systematic attempt to obscure transactions using confidential funds.
Ortega added that no newly flagged names appear in birth, marriage, or death records from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
“If they can’t prove these people exist, then these names become evidence in the impeachment trial,” he said.
The lawmaker, part of the House’s “Young Guns” bloc, previously exposed other questionable names such as Mary Grace Piattos, Pia Piatos-Lim, Renan Piatos, Jay Kamote, Miggy Mango, and multiple individuals all named Dodong.
Ortega emphasized that under Joint Circular 2015-01, government agencies must log aliases and link them to real, verifiable individuals. Failure to do so may constitute misuse of public funds. (TCSP)
