Intel funds use soon tightened due to PCSO mess

The recent controversy over the alleged funds misuse by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) has the Aquino administration tightening the rules on the use of confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs). Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said the Department of Budget and Management will soon issue new guidelines on the use of the CIFs. “Once the new rules are released, all CIF fund utilization will be subject to strict liquidation. Mere certification of CIF fund use will not be allowed," Abad said. He said that the rules have to be revisited after a former PCSO official admitted to using already-questionable CIFs from the sweepstakes office for purposes other than intelligence operations. He noted that the PCSO had even circumvented proper processes to expedite the release of CIFs. “The funds may have been used for seemingly noble purposes, but the P325-million release in those three years under the previous administration was done in a vulgar fashion," Abad said. “It is already questionable for PCSO at that time to have a CIF," the budget chief said, adding that PCSO should not have been given CIFs in the first place. The PCSO in 2010 alone released P160-million in CIFs, a sum that is a little larger than the combined P157.4-million CIF budget of the Department of National Defense and Armed Forces of the Philippines for that same year. During a Senate hearing last week, former PCSO general manager Rosario Uriarte admitted dipping into the PCSO’s intelligence funds to pay for blood money of overseas Filipinos workers imprisoned abroad. Other expenses included relief operations and assistance during calamities, as well as the agency’s efforts to bring down the operations of illegal numbers game. Uriarte said during the hearing that the PCSO was able to get the approval for the release of CIFs by personally handing the agency’s requests to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Also on Tuesday, two of Arroyo’s colleagues in the House of Representatives filed the case before the Office of the Ombudsman for the Pampanga congresswoman’s alleged misuse of the PCSO. — MRT/VS, GMA News