Duty-Free Funds Allegedly Used By Ex-Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo To Buy Bags & Merchandise
Ex-tourism secretary Wanda Teo allegedly used duty-free tourism funds to buy bugs, luxurious cosmetics, and merchandise.
The Commission on Audit (COA) reported that resigned tourism secretary Wanda Teo illegally used P4.143 million duty-free tourism funds to purchase duty-free goods.
The auditors said that Teo allegedly violated the Republic Act (RA) No. 9593 or the Tourism Act for spending the DOT’s profit share.
Teo used DOT’s profit share amount of P2.5 million to purchase goods and consultant, according to COA’s audit report on Duty-Free for 2017.
“The withdrawn merchandise consisted of toiletries, kitchen wares, beddings, appliances, canned goods, branded bags, luxury brand cosmetics, chocolates, and others,” COA said quoted by Rappler.
Duty-Free Chief Operating Officer Vicente Pelagio Angala also spent P1.6 million for a consultant who provides assistant to Duty-Free and DOT and P346,000 for merchandise.
Another P22,893 was used to pay the cost of shipment of goods, which reached a total amount P4.143 million for questionable expenses.
The tourism secretary resigned after COA exposed that DOT spent P60 million for advertisement on her brother Ben Tulfo’s show.
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