MANILA, Philippines - Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II yesterday confirmed that his department would conduct a probe on the previous administration’s alleged misuse of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), simultaneous with the reinvestigation on the multibillion-peso Priority Development Assistance Fund scam.

“We have already received pieces of evidence of misuse of DAP funds,” Aguirre told The STAR.

The justice chief did not specify the DAP anomalies that would be investigated, but a source privy to the DOJ meeting on the issue told The STAR that the probe would cover the dangling of P50 million to senators to vote for the conviction of the late former chief justice Renato Corona during his impeachment trial in 2012.

The insider, who requested anonymity due to lack of authority to speak for the DOJ, stressed that the so-called “reward” by the previous administration for senators who voted to convict Corona became public knowledge after it was disclosed by detained former senator Jinggoy Estrada.

The source also cited a 2014 report of the Commission on Audit (COA) showing that at least 46 former and incumbent lawmakers received DAP funds worth P229.6 million for a milk feeding program just days after Corona was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 2011.

The COA report revealed that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) issued special allotment release orders and notice of cash allocations for the lawmakers on Dec. 22, 2011, or 10 days after the House impeached Corona.

The DAP allocation was supposed to fund a milk feeding program that did not actually accelerate government spending, which was the purpose of the program.

The COA held that the project “may not have fully contributed in the attainment of the DAP objective of accelerating government spending” because “from the time the funds of P167.44 million or 72.9 percent were released in September 2012, only 87 percent or P145.694 million was obligated, and out of which a total of P87.002 million or 59.7 percent was disbursed for 33 projects.”

The agency then recommended that the unutilized funds be returned to the Bureau of Treasury after the Supreme Court (SC) struck down key acts under the DAP for being unconstitutional in July 2014.

“But those DAP funds used to reward senators and congressmen for Corona’s conviction, as admitted by Sen. Jinggoy, was actually the smallest tranche of DAP releases in the previous administration,” the source stressed.

The insider said they have received documentary evidence showing the misuse of millions of DAP funds by some lawmakers during the administration of former president Benigno Aquino III.

“After President Duterte won in the elections, many people have come up to us to submit evidence of corruption in the DAP,” the source bared.

Among those who allegedly received the highest amount of DAP funds were Sen. Francis Pangilinan, with P310.841 million and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, P245 million.

The insider explained that while the SC ruling only imposes liability on the authors of the DAP, the misuse of the funds is a different issue altogether.

Last April, Duterte alleged that Aquino continued to implement DAP despite the SC ruling.

Duterte also vowed to expose how the P72-billion funds under the DAP were misused and how Aquino and Trillanes supposedly benefitted from it.

Last March, the Office of the Ombudsman indicted former budget secretary Florencio Abad – but not Aquino – before the Sandiganbayan for violation of Article 239 or usurpation of legislative powers under the Revised Penal Code over the controversial DAP.