Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo has distanced herself from her siblings on Sunday, as she denied knowledge in the ad placements of more than P60 million worth of ads by her agency on the TV show of her brothers, which drew attention from the Commission on Audit.
The CoA specifically mentioned the show Bitag, which is produced and hosted by Teo’s brothers Ben and Erwin Tulfo, where the DOT reportedly placed the ads.
Bitag is a blocktimer on government station PTV 4.
Teo said she didn’t know that the commercials would be placed in the show of her brothers.
“Ang kontrata is between DOT and PTV [4],” Teo said in a radio interview. “Beyond that hindi ko na alam kung ibinigay nila sa outfit ng brother ko.”
CoA said it flagged the show because there was no memorandum of agreement or contract between PTV 4 and the Tulfo’s Bitag Media Unlimited Inc. to air the DOT commercials.
The auditing agency said that last year PTV 4 paid Bitag P22.09 million in May, P18.96 million in November and another P18.96 million in December.
“Since there was no MOA wherein the terms and conditions of the agreement are supposed to be spelled out, there was also no basis for the computations on how the said three payments were arrived at,” CoA noted.
CoA has ordered PTV 4 management to submit supporting documents for the ad deal with Bitag.
