P-Noy, COA to honor auditors

MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino and the Commission on Audit (COA) will honor the country’s best auditors for having discovered multi-million peso anomalies which prevented scammers from stealing government money.

The audit teams that separately discovered massive irregularities in the loan program of the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-ibig) in Tacloban City and Dagupan City will be given the Outstanding Audit Team Award.

The Tacloban Pag-ibig Audit Team disallowed ineligible Pag-ibig loans amounting to P53.189 million due to the discovery of bogus borrowers. The findings led to recent hearings in Congress.

The team was composed of Director Rodulfo Ariesga and auditors Alicia Malquisto, Imelda Oballo, Elena Merida and Josefina Galos.

The Dagupan Pag-ibig Audit Team, composed of Director Sabiniano Cabatuan, Pelilia Veloso, Herminia Laforteza, and Nixon de Nieva also unearthed irregularities in 978 developer-assisted housing loans totaling P484.73 million.

The team encountered threats and misrepresentations by developers and borrowers while doing the audit but nevertheless completed the job.

Meanwhile, State Auditor Haydee Pasuelo will be this year’s Outstanding COA Employee awardee for her work which resulted in the dismissal of two government officers for malversation of public funds totaling P1.25 million and for her significant audit disallowances in three government agencies totaling P97.84 million.

President Aquino will be the guest of honor as COA recognizes the most outstanding audit work by an individual and team on May 10, 2011.

Past winners of the COA awards have also won outstanding public service awards given by the Civil Service Commission, including Pag-asa ng Bayan awardees COA Quedancor Audit Team for the discovery of anomalies worth P1.7 billion and the COA Meralco Rate Audit Team, which was honored in 2003 for its work which became the basis for the Supreme Court-ordered Meralco refund.

The “COA Salutes the Best” program is the highlight of audit agency’s week-long 112th Anniversary celebration themed “Sustaining Commitment Against Corruption.”