Army Colonel Denies Receiving Confidential Funds from DepEd Amid VP Duterte Impeachment Trial

Army Colonel Manaros Boransing II said Tuesday his unit did not receive any confidential fund from the Department of Education during the term of Vice President Sara Duterte as Education chief for the conduct of eight leadership seminars in Mindanao provinces in 2023. Boransing made the testimony during Day 20 of the impeachment trial of the Vice President as a witness for the prosecution. He said that while they conducted the Youth Leadership Seminar (YLS) with DepEd, he does not know how the agency paid for its expenses in the said seminar. DepEd provided the military with information on schools and the schedule of the students to determine their availability for the seminar. “I have no knowledge on [DepEd’s] source of funds. I can only speak for us,” Boransing said. “There were no DepEd funds downloaded to our unit,” he added. Boransing was one of the military officials who issued military certifications in January 2024, which was issued on the request of then DepEd Undersecretary Michael Poa who is now one of the defense counsels of the Vice President. Poa said he asked for military certifications in response to state auditors’ queries seeking documentary evidence on DepEd’s P15.5 million worth of confidential fund spending for rewards to informants. Boransing said he did not know his certification will be used to justify DepEd’s confidential fund spending. “I have no knowledge of that. I haven’t even read COA (Commission on Audit) documents,” he said. The military official, however, did not take offense that his certification was used for justifying DepEd’s confidential fund expenses. “I did not have any reaction,” Boransing said. However, he could not say if he will again issue a certification if he knew that DepEd will use it to justify its P15.54 million confidential fund spending. “It is hard to speculate what I would have done,” Boradding added. —AOL, GMA News