By Tracy Cabrera
The Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) has ordered the preventive suspension of Quezon City Barangay Quirino 3-B (Claro) chairman Ronald Noga Tagle and his treasurer Richelle Ann Formanes Santillan over the disbursement of Barangay funds without the required documentation.
According to the OMB, the suspension order comes after it ascertained that Tagle and Santillan approved numerous transactions involving millions of public funds while lacking supporting documents.
In a statement, the Ombudsman disclosed that the order was released following a Commission on Audit (CoA) report that flagged “financial irregularities and unsupported disbursements of barangay funds.”
The COA Quezon City Field Office audited the funds of Barangay Quirino 3-B (Claro) and found various deficiencies, prompting the issuance of “numerous” audit observation memoranda and notices of disallowance from 2017 to 2020.
Among the deficiencies cited by state auditors include the “non-submission of required supporting documents, as well as irregularities in the utilization, documentation and processing of barangay funds.
CoA’s findings indicated that there were procurement transactions in 2017 and 2018 worth a total of ₱1.4 million that did not have complete documentations.
The audit report also found “undocumented disbursements,” or transactions lacking mandatory supporting documents, worth ₱15.9 million in 2020, ₱24 million in 2021, ₱17.6 million in 2022 and ₱17.8 million in 2023.
Despite repeated overtures from CoA, Tagle and Santillan still failed to submit the necessary accounting records.
