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Lawyer Manases Carpio. Maria Tan, ABS-CBN News/File
MANILA — The Bank of the Philippine Islands had requested to the Anti-Money Laundering Council to delete some P2-billion worth of flagged transactions in the records of the husband of Vice President Sara Duterte, her lawyer disclosed Tuesday before the Senate impeachment court.
During the continuation of his cross-examination, defense lawyer Mark Vinluan confronted AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura with a "confidential information sharing report" from the agency that indicated the request from the BPI.
Vinluan asked Buenaventura to read portions of the report, which stated that the bank in a letter dated April 6, 2026, had requested for the deletion of 13 covered transaction report (CTR) records pertaining to lawyer and businessman Manases Carpio, Duterte's spouse.
Banks and other covered persons and institutions are mandated by law to report to AMLC a transaction exceeding P500,000 that is made in a single day, which falls under CTR. This does not automatically mean that the transaction is illegal.
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BPI said "a system bug from a source application system resulted in inaccurate amounts on the said records," according to the report read by Buenaventura.
The actual amounts Manager's Checks procured for Carpio from the reports affected by the system bug were below P500,000, ranging from P100,000 to P455,357.14, according to the report.
This means that the amounts should not have been reported to the AMLC because they fall below the reporting threshold for CTRs.
"With this request and granting if it is already correct this time, it would appear that the total amount of Manager's Checks procured by Nutri-Asia, Inc. in favor of Carpio would only be P2,110,714.29 and not P2,334,617,151.92, it also said.
Buenaventura noted that the AMLC report that contained the request from BPI existed before he assumed his position last April 2026.
He also acknowledged that adjustments were made following the request from the bank.
But private prosecutor Mae Divinagracia pointed out that there are several other reasons before a rectification is made to an AMLC report, saying "we cannot attribute the correction solely from the correction requested by that covered institution."
Presiding officer Sen. Francis Escudero backed her argument.
Despite the correction, the total flagged transactions in the bank accounts of Duterte and her husband received by the AMLC from 2007 to 2025 still led to P4.4 billion — an amount questioned by the defense panel due to aggregation.
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