Tighten internal controls, COA tells PSC

State auditors have called out the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) for its weak internal controls in processing athletes and coaches’ allowances that led to a payroll padding scam bared last July.

The Commission on Audit (COA) noted a P5.7 million discrepancy in the payrolls for athletes and coaches from January to September 2019, “indicating that the payrolls were padded.”

“The occurrence of payroll padding showed that there [are] very loose internal controls on the related processes. The processes involved for the payment of athletes’ and coaches’ allowances were not completely documented in the PSC’s Citizens’ Charter Handbook,” a COA report on the PSC read.

The report added: “Due to the noted lapses in the processes involving the allowances of athletes and coaches, the agency incurred monetary loss in the amount of P5,791,557.78 caused by the payroll fraud scheme committed by a contract of service personnel.”

The COA said the PSC board of commissioners should “strengthen internal control on the processing payments of the athletes and coaches’ allowances by requiring the responsible officers to conduct due diligence to counterchecking/review of the details of the information indicated in the documents/reports.”

The PSC should also “revisit the processes involved and institute other backstopping processes/measures such that no individual has complete control on the preparation of relevant reports to prevent occurrence of payroll fraud.”

It may be recalled that last July, the PSC discovered a “payroll padding” scam on the monthly allowances of athletes and coaches, committed by an employee who prepared the payroll list. INQ