COA: LTO-7 issued P14M in illegal checks

The Commission on Audit said the Land Transportation Office-7 released checks amounting to P14.2 million without approved disbursement vouchers and other supporting documents.

It was discovered that the payees of at least 15 checks disowned the endorsement signatures appearing in the back of the checks and denied having received their proceeds.

The state auditors also found out that some other checks were issued to certain individuals who have not transacted business with the Land Transportation Office at all.

COA said the issuance checks without the approved disbursement vouchers violates Sections 4 and 88 of Presidential Decree 1445 or the Government Accounting and Auditing Manual.

Because of the discovery, Marissa Beriña was dismissed from her job as disbursing officer of the LTO-7 regional office and is presently facing an anti-graft complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas.

COA said that the whole amount involved is P14,287,483 but LTO-7 legal officer Vicente Gador Jr. believes that there could be more, although it is still being investigated by the Ombudsman in coordination with the state auditors.

The records showed that 53 checks amounting to P9,561,109 were issued in favor of Beriña, while 36 other checks with a total value of P3,273,887 were issued to the different payees.

Payees of the 17 checks involving the amount of P1,849,536 could not be determined because the checks returned by the Land Bank of the Philippines branch in Cebu City can no longer be found.

Beriña was not available for comment yesterday.  Gador, who is her neighbor in Minglanilla, also said he has not seen here for the past several months.  It was discovered that all those checks that were issued without the necessary documents have already been encashed in the bank.

Yvonne Auza, the new disbursing officer who replaced Beriña, refused to discuss the specific case of the anomaly, but said once the required documents are already in place, the disbursing officer will immediately prepare the disbursement voucher to be signed by her and it will be submitted to the LTO regional director for his signature.

The policy is that if the regional director is out, the administrative officer who is holding office just outside the regional director’s cubicle is allowed to sign the voucher and the check.

Then LTO-7 regional director Alex Leyson who has been reassigned to Eastern Visayas could not be reached for comment, the alleged anomalies happened during his term here.

COA said the anomalous activities happened and was not detected right away because the accountant did not regularly review and verify the bank reconciliation statements and the monthly report on accountability of accountable forms to determine which checks were not recorded in the release checks issued.

Then it was also found out that the administrative officer, whose name was not identified in the COA report, just signed blank checks and did not demand from the disbursing officer the needed vouchers and other documents.

Aside from the disbursing officer, COA also recommended that an investigation should be conducted to identify other LTO officials who can be blamed for the anomaly because they failed to do their job.  — Rene U. Borromeo/BRP