Short answer. Yes. Article 217 of the Revised Penal Code covers the accountable officer who, through abandonment or negligence, permits another person to take public funds or property. He does not have to have pocketed anything himself — allowing the taking is punished as malversation, with the same penalty scale.
What the law says
shall consent, through abandonment or negligence, shall permit any other person to take such public funds or property, wholly or partially
Revised Penal Code, Article 217 — Malversation Of Public Funds. Read the full provision →
Negligence is written into the offence
Most people assume malversation means the officer took the money. Article 217 is broader. It reaches the accountable officer who appropriates the funds, who takes or misappropriates them, and equally the one who — through abandonment or negligence — lets someone else take them, wholly or partially. Two conditions still have to hold. The person must be a public officer, and he must be accountable for public funds or property by reason of the duties of his office. An employee who handles no funds and holds no accountability is not within the article, however careless he was. Accountability is fixed by the duties of the post, not by the job title.
The presumption that catches most officers
The last paragraph of the article is the one that decides real cases. Failure of an accountable officer to produce public funds or property with which he is chargeable, on demand by a duly authorised officer, is prima facie evidence that he put the missing funds to personal use. Prima facie is not conclusive — it can be met with evidence — but the practical effect is that once a shortage is demanded and not produced, the officer is the one who must explain. That is why an audit demand letter should never be left unanswered, and why records, receipts and turnover documents matter more than any verbal account of what happened.
How much is missing changes everything
The penalty runs on a ladder keyed to the amount involved, from prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods at the lowest bracket up to reclusion perpetua where the amount exceeds the highest threshold. In every case there is also perpetual special disqualification and a fine equal to the amount malversed or the value of the property embezzled. The brackets now in force — beginning at forty thousand pesos and rising through one million two hundred thousand, two million four hundred thousand, four million four hundred thousand and eight million eight hundred thousand pesos — come from Republic Act No. 10951 (2017). Pre-2017 copies of the Code print far lower thresholds and should not be relied on.
What this does not settle
Restitution does not erase the offence, though returning the funds may bear on other things. The criminal case is also only one track: an accountable officer typically faces an audit disallowance and an administrative case at the same time, each with its own timetable. And where the funds were real but spent on a public purpose other than the one they were appropriated for, that is a different and lighter offence than taking them. Because so much turns on the accountability documents and the audit findings, this is not a matter to answer from memory — bring the actual records to counsel before responding to any demand.