Some lawmakers are saying Vice President Sara Duterte might be in big trouble. Why? Because some of the people listed as receiving secret government funds might not even be real!
Lawmakers found three new names—Pia Piatos-Lim, Renan Piatos, and Xiaome Ocho—on a list of people who supposedly got money from the Vice President’s Office. But here’s the problem: these names don’t show up in official government records!
One lawmaker, Paolo Ortega, even joked that “Xiaome Ocho” sounds like a cellphone brand, and that “Piatos” is very similar to “Mary Grace Piattos”—another name they suspect is fake.
“How come these people got money? What makes them special?” Ortega asked. He and other lawmakers checked records from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), which keeps track of people’s birth, marriage, and death records. And guess what? They found that these names were not in the PSA database at all!
🔍 Big Red Flags!
The lawmakers discovered that out of 1,992 names connected to the confidential funds:
- 1,322 people had no birth records!
- 1,456 had no marriage records!
- 1,593 had no death records!
This made lawmakers even more suspicious. “Where did all this money really go? Were these names just made up?” they asked.
📢 “Imaginary People, Real Money?”
Representative Jefferson Khonghun said this proves that the Vice President’s office might have misused government funds. He believes officials may have hurriedly made up names to cover up where the money went.
“We know there are more fake names, and we’re checking them now,” Ortega said. That’s why 215 lawmakers have already signed the impeachment complaint against the Vice President.
🛑 Trying to Stop the Investigation?
Now, the Vice President’s team has asked the Supreme Court to cancel the impeachment case against her. But lawmakers are asking: If she did nothing wrong, why is she trying to stop it?
Vice President Sara Duterte has denied stealing money. She says she is ready to defend herself in an impeachment trial—as long as the process is fair.
But lawmakers are determined. “We need the Senate trial to find out the truth,” they said. “We need to know who’s telling the truth… and who’s lying.”
