Palace tosses ex-Monetary Board execs’ case to ombudsman

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July 16, 2025 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang said it is up to the Office of the Ombudsman to pursue criminal charges against two former members of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Monetary Board who resigned in the wake of a ghost employee controversy last year.

“That will be studied,” Presidential Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro said in a press briefing yesterday when asked whether the Office of the President would support the filing of cases against the two ex-officials.

“The President wants his administration to be clean. Those who should be held into account should be held into account,” Castro said.

The controversy, which surfaced in 2023, involved a number of employees who were still getting salaries even if they had not been reporting for work. Monetary Board members V. Bruce Tolentino and Anita Linda Aquino stepped down from their posts following reports about the irregularity, which was described by the central bank as “unprecedented.”

Last month, BSP Governor Eli Remolona Jr. told The STAR that the case was settled by the fact that the two former Monetary Board members had resigned. The matter involving Tolentino and Aquino has been referred to the Office of the President since they were presidential appointees, the central bank chief added.

Castro explained that the filing of criminal cases is within the purview of the Office of the Ombudsman. Meanwhile, the filing of administrative cases lies within the authority of the Office of the President. Since Tolentino and Aquino are no longer part of the Monetary Board, the filing of administrative cases is already moot and academic, she said.

“Let us see whether there are cases that will be filed against them that will emanate from the ombudsman,” she added.

In an earlier statement, the BSP said the Office of the General Counsel started an investigation in October 2023 after obtaining “credible” information that several staffers in the offices of two Monetary Board members had not been reporting for work for extended periods of time but were getting salaries.

The office received an initial report of the probe in December and ordered investigators to proceed with an in-depth probe. The following month, the investigating team submitted the final investigation report, where four employees and their two immediate supervisors were identified.

From late February to early March, four of the employees and one direct supervisor implicated in the report stepped down, according to the BSP.