With the Philippines still reeling from the apparent suicide of a retired general who had been implicated in an investigation of military graft, a spokesman for the armed forces said Thursday that such corruption was a thing of the past.

“We’d like to inform you and stress that reforms have been ongoing as far back as a decade ago,” the spokesman, Lt. Gen. Jose Mabanta Jr., said at a news conference. “Malpractice does not happen at this time.”

He spoke two days after Angelo Reyes, a former defense secretary and chief of staff of the armed forces, died of a gunshot wound at the cemetery where his mother was buried, in what a police official called a suicide.

In Senate testimony last month, George Rabusa, a retired colonel who had been a budget officer in the military comptroller’s office, had accused Mr. Reyes and two other former chiefs of staff of pocketing the equivalent of millions of dollars from a slush fund maintained with kickbacks from military contractors. Mr. Reyes was chief of staff in 2000 and 2001; he later became defense secretary.

On Thursday, General Mabanta said the system that had made the slush fund possible was no longer in place. He said the comptroller’s office had been abolished in 2005 in response to a commission’s recommendations, and had been replaced by four units that operate independently of one another.

General Mabanta also said the military had improved its rules and guidelines concerning the use of funds from the United Nations and other agencies. Mr. Rabusa had alleged in his Senate testimony that money from the United Nations to pay for the services of Philippine peacekeeping missions abroad had often been misappropriated.

General Mbanta said the military establishment had been reeling from the revelations. “No doubt the armed forces has been affected by this series of exposés,” he said. “It is our soldiers who would really like to find out what has happened because we are the aggrieved party.”

Mr. Rabusa’s revelations have gripped the Philippines, even though allegations of official corruption are far from uncommon in the country.

Rep. Roilo Golez, vice chairman of the House committee on national security and defense, which is also holding hearings on the issue, said Thursday that while changes are indeed being implemented, there is still a need to investigate whether these are working and whether corruption has actually ended. “This is what we are trying to determine, so it is important that the hearings continue,” he said in an interview.

Carolina Hernandez, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines who was a member of the Feliciano Commission that investigated corruption in the armed forces in 2004, said Tuesday that these revelations were not new, and she called the current hearings “hypocrisy of the highest degree.”

“They’re acting as if this is the first time that this happened,” she said.

“It’s been there since — I don’t know — time immemorial?”

While there have been improvements, she said, the changes recommended by the Feliciano Commission and similar commissions in the past either were late in coming or not fully implemented.

In January, the Department of National Defense promised to conduct its own investigation into the scandal to determine whether these practices were still being committed.

Meanwhile, the family of the Mr. Reyes is considering filing charges against those who accused him of corruption, their lawyer said Thursday.

The military has said it would give him full military honors.

At his wake in Manila, dignitaries and former presidents paid their respects since Wednesday.

In an interview over radio station DZIQ, former president Fidel V. Ramos, himself a former general, praised Mr. Reyes for his courage, calling Mr. Reyes’s apparent suicide a “daring sacrifice for the common good.” Mr. Reyes, he said, “tried to save the institutions that he represented.” He would not elaborate.