MANILA — The executive director of the Anti-Money Laundering Council is set to face cross examination on Day 34 of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte as her spokesman claims there is an explanation for the P4.4 billion aggregate transactions linked to her and her husband.
Duterte's spokesperson Paolo Panelo said there was a “perfectly reasonable explanation” why there was P4.4 billion in transactions in Duterte’s accounts but noted he had been advised by the defense not to disclose it for now until the presentation of bank representatives.
Panelo noted the defense objected to the testimony of AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura because AMLC reports were raw data and should remain confidential since they could be misleading.
“As clarified yesterday, the P4.4 billion is not cash in a drawer but a total…There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. It is misleading and inappropriate to do it this way,” he said in an interview with ANC’s Headstart.
Impeachment Trial of Sara Duterte
In his testimony, Buenaventura said the P4.4 billion in financial transactions was an aggregate of transactions of covered transaction reports (CTR) and suspicious transaction reports (STRs) involving VP Duterte and her husband from 2007 to 2025.
He said the AMLC received 666 CTRs and 55 STRs involving bank accounts of Duterte and her husband.
In the interview, Panelo said the Vice President was not familiar with Cale88 Foods Corporation, a banana chip manufacturer linked to Duterte’s husband Manases Carpio. This, after the AMLC executive director confirmed that the company received P319 million in deposits from China-linked entities.
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He added that assuming that the transactions were legitimate, “there is nothing wrong with exporting banana chips to China and Hong Kong.”
He noted that this was not a one-time transactions but “hundreds of transactions” with Cale88.
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In a separate interview, former chief justice Renato Corona's lawyer Tranquil Salvador III said the cash flows in Duterte’s accounts would be further explained by bank representatives from LandBank, Asia United Bank, Philippine Savings Bank, Metrobank, BPI, PNB and Banco de Oro.
He noted the cash flows do not reveal the actual bank deposits but only activity in the accounts.
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Salvador noted Corona was convicted in his impeachment trial for failure to disclose dollar deposits while ex-chief justice Lourdes Sereno was also removed from office via a quo warranto petition for failure to submit her SALNs covering her years as a law professor in UP.
In both cases, Salvador said the two were removed for failure to disclose small amounts of money compared to the huge sums being discussed in the Duterte impeachment trial.
“Malayong-malayo ang mga amount sa dun sa dalawang tao na ‘yun dito sa pinag-uusapan natin ngayon,” he said in a DZMM interview.
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