PSC Employee Caught Pocketing Almost Php 15 Million Athlete Allowance
Paul Michael Ignacio, a long time employee of the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) has been arrested by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for allegedly pocketing over Php 15 million funds which are supposedly budgeted for athletes.
According to the report, the “payroll-padding” scheme goes like this.
- Names of athletes (at least 5-10) who are no longer under PSC or dropped from the roster will be inserted manually in the ledger containing the list of salaries for each athlete.
- His bank account will be inserted instead of the previously listed account of the athlete no longer in service.
For 8 years, he started by stealing funds amounting to Php 20,000 a month which went as high as Php 450,000 monthly as he got more and more comfortable with the system. The PSC got suspicious when the Land Bank Philippines, which handles the account of PSC, red-flagged the account when it noticed that allowances have been going into Ignacio’s account.
The PSC soon after filed a complaint and launched an investigation as soon as it as it was informed of the scheme. As a former athlete himself, PSC’s officer-in-charge, Ramon Fernandez took it personally as he mentioned that salaries for the athletes have been cut in half just so they could make the budget last for everyone until December this year.
Cases of falsification of public documents and qualified theft will be filed instead of graft and corruption as Ignacio is not a regular employee of the PSC.
The NBI and the PSC will continue its investigation to see if there are other people involved in the scheme.
See below for the full video from 24 Oras / GMA News.
News Via : 24 Oras / GMA News
Featured Image Via : Philippine Sports Commission
