THE military may have found no anomaly in the reported misuse of more than P400 million alloted for fuel but this does not mean that Commo. Teddy Pan and former Armed Forces chief of staff Ricardo David are already off the hook.

Gen. Eduardo Oban Jr., Armed Forces chief of staff, said their investigation into the military’s provision for oil and lubricants is still continuing, with the probe now centered on the possible abuse of gasoline fleet cards through the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics (J-4) that Pan headed.

Earlier, the military leadership relieved Pan of his duties as logistics chief as it investigated the reported more than P400-million increase in fuel spending.

On Wednesday Commo. Miguel Rodriguez, Armed Forces spokesman, said the investigation by the provost marshal, judge advocate general’s office and the internal auditor, and its results have already been submitted to Oban for approval.

Oban said the reported misuse of funds for fuel, oil and lubricants is nonexistent. He said during the first three months of this year, the military only spent a total of P78 million in oil and lubricants, below the P98-million allotted reserve.

“We have just finished with the POL [petroleum, oil and lubricants] management, and the allegations on the P400 spike in expenditures was that there was no truth to [it] simply because, number one, there was no allocation yet for the first quarter of CY 2011 because at that time, the bidding was being conducted at the procurement of POL for 2011 till 2013.”

“In terms of the P400 million, he [Pan] had no direct involvement,” he said.

“We are still continuing some other management audits and until we’re done, then we will have to say that if he has no involvement whatsoever in the POL management,” Oban added.

The chief of staff said the investigation and audit cover some areas, and this include the fleet cards for gasoline, which is tied with the supply for oil and lubricants.

“Insofar as the P400 million alleged spike, that’s done. The fleet card management, this is another audit that we are looking into, that is why we cannot say categorically that it is finished [investigation],” Oban said.

The claims involving fleet cards were that they were issued not only to members of the military, but even to relatives and friends of some officers during the time of David.

Pan and David are Philippine Military Academy classmates and the former became the J-4 during the time of David as chief of staff.

Some officers are not only holding David accountable by virtue of command responsibility, but because some of the fleet cards were reportedly issued to his friends.

When the investigation was conducted, some of the issued fleet cards were reportedly returned.

Some officers who are privy to the investigation said the issuance of fleet cards is not the only issue, but it also include the fact that some of them are fakes or are overly allocated or loaded with funds that are way beyond the limit.

One officer said there were three sources of POL that were used, and these are the joint command combined fund, whose approval or release is under the discretion of the chief of staff, the strategic POL reserves and the supplemental POL.

“The third source of POL was the one that was overly used during the time of David,” he said.

The officer said some junior officers were keenly following the developments on the ongoing investigation, since it involves hundreds of millions of military funds.

“You should ask them also where the millions of pesos that were loaded onto the fleet cards of the logistic centers of the Air Force, Army and Navy went,” he added.