Senate has no confidential funds in 2023, says official

Senate Secretary Renato Bantug Jr. on Tuesday denied allegations that the upper chamber has P331 million confidential funds for 2023.

Bantug issued the statement amid “social media posts” which he said are “deliberately misleading and maliciously presented by some personalities who seek to malign and tarnish the reputation of an institution currently taking a long, hard look at the nature of confidential and intelligence funds and the government agencies that deserve to have them.”

“The Senate, for 2023, has NO ALLOCATION for confidential funds. The records will show that under the Senate's Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE) this year, the object of expenditure ‘Confidential, Intelligence and Extraordinary Expenses’ has three line items and these are Confidential Funds, Intelligence Funds and Extraordinary and Miscellaneous Expenses,” Bantug said.

“For 2023, only ‘Extraordinary and Miscellaneous Expenses’ has a line item amounting to P331,942,000. There are no line items for ‘Confidential Funds’ nor ‘Intelligence Funds,’" he added.

According to the Senate secretary, the P331.9 million are used for meetings, seminars, conferences, public relations, education and other activities of the chamber.

While he denied that there are no confidential funds in the current year, Bantug disclosed that the upper chamber had confidential funds in the following years but these “were never used and were reverted to the National Treasury in full”:

• P100 million in 2020
• P100 million in 2021
• P50 million in 2022

“Senate President Juan Miguel ‘Migz' F. Zubiri is firm in his belief that the Senate does not need confidential funds,” he said.

“The Senate, through the recently constituted Select Oversight Committee on Confidential and Intelligence Funds, will continue to examine the CIFs of government agencies under a rigorous lens of scrutiny and realign them accordingly to those who really need them,” he added.

Asked if it means that there will be no confidential funds for the Senate next year as well, Bantug replied in the affirmative.

"Yes, that is correct. We don’t have CF this year and we won’t have it next year. That is certain," he said.

Bantug did not specify whose allegations he was responding to, but lawyer Harry Roque, who served as Palace spokesperson under former president Rodrigo Duterte, earlier in the day questioned supposed confidential funds for some officials, including P331.9 million allegedly for the Senate President.

“Akala ko ang confidential funds ay tatanggalin? Bakit may P2.25-B ang Presidente, P331.9-M si SP, at P1.61-B si Speaker?” he said in a Facebook post.

Blogger Sass Rogando Sasot also made similar statements in several Facebook posts.

“Maraming salamat po sa mga taga COA na nag-feed sa akin ng information about the 1.6 BILLION EXTRAORDINARY FUND ng Kongreso under Martin Romualdez at sa 331 MILLION EXTRAORDINARY FUND under Senator Migz Zubiri” she said in one of the posts.

Meanwhile, Senate President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III said Malacañang's confidental funds should be decreased and its intelligence fund removed.

"The [Office of the President] is a civilian agency which is not and should not be engaged in intelligence gathering considering the workload of the OP," Pimentel said.

"If the OP is truly busy then it s manpower/personnel shouldn’t have time anymore for surveillance work and intel gathering. Leave that to the specialists in the field of intelligence," he added.

"Unless these people in the OP have too much time on their hands," Pimentel said. — BM/NB, GMA Integrated News