A ranking official of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. on Thursday claimed only P1.2 million was lost to the fake receipts scam involving insurance premiums from overseas Filipino workers.
PhilHealth president and chief executive officer Ricardo Morales, in a statement, said the involved money lost to the scam was P1.2 million, and not P16 million as earlier claimed by a whistleblower.
“Contrary to reports that some P16 million were lost due to the said scam, PhilHealth has verified a total of P1.2 million worth of contributions that are with fake receipts,” he said.
Out of the P1.2 million, the agency had recovered P430,000 from the manning agencies responsible for issuing fake PhilHealth premium receipts, he said.
PhilHealth is still in the process of recovering the remaining amount, he added.
“The balance [of the P1.2 million]is in various stages of recovery,” he said.
He gave the assurance that they reported the lost money to the National Bureau of Investigation in 2015.
“Since then, it [PhilHealth] has been in constant coordination with the NBI for guidance on the necessary legal actions to take against the perpetrators,” he said, citing PhilHealth had a memorandum of agreement with the NBI for the filing of criminal charges.
He said he would take all necessary measures to prevent a repeat of such scam to happen.
“PhilHealth is further strengthening its information technology system as well as its coordination with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration for a mechanism that will assure OFWs that their premium contributions are properly remitted to and accounted for, pursuant to the approval of Philippine Overseas Employment Administration’s Governing Board on the matter in January 2019,” he said.
