Wanted: Mary Grace Piattos

For a woman whose signature appears on acknowledgment receipts covering tens of millions in public funds used by the Office of the Vice President, no one in the OVP seems to know who Mary Grace Piattos is. Or is it Mary Grace Piatty?

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Her full name is scrawled on more than 1,200 acknowledgment receipts deemed deficient by the Commission on Audit. The ARs justify the OVP's disbursement of P125 million in confidential funds under Sara Duterte. The COA said the amounts in the ARs were part of the P73 million that it had disallowed in the OVP's confidential funds for 2022.

Apart from bearing apparently spurious signatures, the ARs for 2022 were dated December 2023—a slip that the OVP reportedly described to the COA as clerical errors. The COA said 787 of the ARs had unnamed signatories while 302 bore unintelligible names.