The men who had the correct bank records on Dutertes all along

It all started during the 2016 presidential elections, when former senator Antonio Trillanes IV — then running as vice president — campaigned hard against Rodrigo Duterte, who was at the time Davao City mayor.

Trillanes, a former soldier and mutineer, said that a person by the name of Joseph De Mesa went to him with a bunch of documents allegedly detailing years’ worth of bank transactions involving Duterte. De Mesa, who has remained just a name all these years, claimed to have gotten the documents from a relative from an investigative body.

Trillanes made his own financial analysis of the transactions and came up with an amount: P2.4 billion worth of deposits over the years not matching Duterte’s declared net worth. At this time there had already been audit reports on the city government of Davao questioning the salaries of thousands of contractual workers who had insufficient documentation.

With these information, Trillanes filed a plunder complaint against Duterte just before the elections, and alleged that those undocumented workers were ghost employees, whose salaries paid from the city’s coffers were part and parcel of that P2.4-billion cash flow. Trillanes tried to get the Anti Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to confirm his documents, but these requests were denied on the basis of confidentiality.

Then Duterte won as president.

Deputy Ombudsman Carandang gets bank records, too

Following due process, the Office of the Ombudsman investigated the Trillanes complaint. This happened during the last two years of Conchita Carpio Morales as ombudsman. She inhibited from any Duterte-related cases because she is related to them through Manases Carpio, the husband of Vice President Sara Duterte. Manases’ father is Carpio Morales’ brother.

In his first year as president, the tough-talking Duterte was already waging word wars against AMLC. Still annoyed by the Trillanes accusation, Duterte said he’d whack AMLC officials for protecting actual money launderers, and letting Trillanes continue with his story.

Through this all, AMLC denied leaking documents to Trillanes. But it also never denied — nor confirmed — the information that the documents contained. In January 2017, then-AMLC chief Julia Abad, a former Malacañang official under then-president Noynoy Aquino, resigned. She was replaced by Mel Racela, a San Beda alumnus like Rodrigo and Sara Duterte.

In September 2017, the Ombudsman’s investigation into Trillanes’ complaint made some headway. Documents supposedly from AMLC reached the office of then-overall deputy ombudsman Arthur Carandang. Speaking to Rappler, Carandang said the documents looked “more or less” like Trillanes’ documents, and that these revealed at least a P1-billion cash flow.

Once again, the AMLC distanced itself from the issue. It said it did not provide “the Office of the Ombudsman with any report as a consequence of any investigation of subject accounts for any purpose.”

Raw documents and a full-blown investigative report are different. It was never made clear by AMLC whether the raw documents, which are stacks and stacks of paper containing a bunch of numbers, were fake.

All the AMLC said at the time was this: “the alleged debits and credits representing outflows and inflows of funds were added together, thus, the resulting total amounts are wrong and misleading.”

Duterte fires Carandang

In Malacañang, Duterte was already fuming at Carandang, accusing him of stealing bank records and violating confidentiality. Lawyers allied with Duterte sued Carandang and asked that he be removed from office.

These complaints were filed before Malacañang, despite a Supreme Court ruling saying that presidents cannot fire an overall deputy ombudsman.

AMLC had also completely stopped cooperating with the Ombudsman’s investigation, forcing the office to just stop the probe. The investigation was terminated without prejudice to a refiling should new evidence come to light.

Carandang was suspended at first, then dismissed altogether, losing his retirement benefits.

When he was suspended, his boss Morales did not implement the suspension because she said she was following the Supreme Court rule. Morales said the Office of the Ombudsman will instead investigate Carandang for alleged breach, and that they would decide if he would be punished with sanctions.

This internal investigation was superseded by Morales’ retirement, and the entry of Duterte’s appointed ombudsman in 2018: Samuel Martires. Martires implemented the dismissal order in 2019.

Fast forward to April 22, 2026, during a House justice committee hearing on the impeachment complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte. Part of the accusation in the complaint against Sara Duterte is alleged unexplained wealth.

Trillanes attended the hearing with the bank records he has had with him for the past 10 years.

It’s a match

By then AMLC also had a new head, Ronel Buenaventura, who was only a few weeks into the job as executive director. He was promoted from his previous role as acting deputy director of AMLC’s commitments and policy group.

Mamamayang Liberal Partylist Representative Leila de Lima picked 18 random transactions from Trillanes’ records, and cross-matched it with AMLC’s records. The random transactions were a match, said Buenaventura.

“We confirm that for all the dates and the amounts mentioned, there are similar transactions existing in the AMLC report,” said Buenaventura.

Even more, Buenaventura said there is a total of P6.77 billion in large and suspicious transactions that flowed through the bank accounts of Vice President Sara Duterte and her husband, Mans Carpio, from 2006 to 2025. This amount does not match Sara Duterte’s Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN).

“I am relieved na sa ngayon, sa wakas, after 10 years ay kinumpirma ng AMLC ‘yung aking nilalabas sa taong bayan simula pa noong 2016. Nalungkot lang ako na hindi naniwala ‘yung mga kababayan natin ‘nung una ko ‘tong inilabas,” Trillanes said.

(I am relieved that now, finally, after 10 years, AMLC confirmed what I had been telling our countrymen since 2016. I’m just sad that our countrymen did not believe me the first time I exposed this.)

Vice President Duterte said “the billions of pesos in bank accounts are untrue.” In a statement on Thursday, April 23, she called out the “newly-installed AMLC officials who remain silent and refuse to clarify that there have been no findings of violations of anti-money laundering laws.”

“Previous AMLC leaderships should be made to account for this failure to flag Duterte transactions over the course of several years. Upon monitoring of covered and suspicious transactions, proceedings should have been undertaken to prosecute the Dutertes for money laundering and its predicate offenses,” said Bicol Saro Partylist Representative Terry Ridon. – Rappler.com