KAWIT, Cavite — State auditors found that the local government of Kawit, Cavite under then-Mayor Angelo Aguinaldo improperly consolidated nearly P14 million in disbursements into single checks covering multiple claims during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, in a practice the Commission on Audit (COA) said violated government accounting law and made individual transactions deliberately difficult to trace.
In a COA audit report, auditors documented 41 instances in which the municipality issued a single check to cover anywhere from two to 37 distinct Disbursement Vouchers for the same payee — recording them as one transaction in both the Cashbook and the Check Disbursements Journal, in violation of Section 111 of Presidential Decree No. 1445, which mandates that government accounts be kept in sufficient detail to allow fiscal monitoring and examination.
The total value of disbursements covered by the irregularly bundled checks reached P13,929,888.49.
COA auditors said the Municipal Treasurer combined multiple DVs of the same payee into a single check, while the Municipal Accounting Office likewise recorded them as one transaction — with neither office maintaining detailed records of the individual transactions or the reference numbers of the DVs covered. The audit team said it spent significant time locating the vouchers because the Accounting Office could not immediately provide check numbers for the transactions, even though the information was eventually found written on the face of paid disbursement vouchers on file.
Most of the disbursements pertained to COVID-19 pandemic-related expenses, a period during which massive government spending across the country attracted widespread scrutiny over fund misuse and ghost transactions.
The audit tables appended to the report raise pointed questions about the beneficiaries of the bundled disbursements. The name Angelo Emilio G. Aguinaldo — who shares the surname of the then-mayor — appears as a payee in at least eight separate checks totaling approximately P2.84 million, including a single check for P825,333 covering six DVs, another for P482,300 covering nine DVs, and a check for P333,777.17 bundling 15 disbursement vouchers. The COA report does not identify the relationship, if any, between the payee and the sitting mayor at the time.
Other notable entries in the audit tables include a check for P4,045,345 issued to 3PS Catering Services covering five DVs — the single largest amount in the list — and P1,898,500 paid to Ernest Funeral Services across 26 bundled DVs. Daijobu Trading received a check for P569,468.50 covering the highest number of combined DVs in a single transaction at 37. Other payees included medical centers, diagnostic clinics, hospitals, funeral services, printing firms, and a consumer goods training provider.
COA recommended that the municipal mayor direct the municipal treasurer to stop consolidating multiple claims or DVs into a single check — regardless of whether the DVs pertain to the same payee — to ensure more effective tracing, monitoring, and examination of individual disbursements and supporting documents.
No statement from the Aguinaldo camp was available at the time of this report.
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