IN NUMBERS: What impeachment hearings unveiled about Sara Duterte’s wealth

When Rodrigo Duterte sought the presidency in 2016, he packaged himself as an everyday man whose modest lifestyle was shaped by his limited means. He would later flip-flop and admit that his family wasn’t poor, and that his father left an inheritance.

Today, his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, is on a similar boat, facing allegations of unexplained wealth. While she didn’t brand herself as coming from the margins, supposed inconsistencies between her large bank transactions and her net worth declarations could be — in critics’ words — the smoking gun that could have her removed from office.

The bank records were first disclosed by former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, but confirmation from the Anti-Money Laundering Council puts to rest claims that his revelations were unfounded.

The AMLC report was made public after the House justice committee, which has subpoena powers, compelled the council to lift the curtains on the Vice President’s financial records.

Billions of pesos in transactions

The top headline that came out of the April 22 hearing was AMLC’s revelation that according to the banks, the accounts named under VP Duterte and her husband Mans Carpio were the subject of covered transaction reports (CTR) and suspicious transaction reports (STR) amounting to P6.77 billion from 2006 to 2025. 

AMLC’s disclosure only covers CTRs and STRs. CTRs are large transactions of at least P500,000 each that banks are mandated to report to the council. STRs, meanwhile, are what the name suggests, although there are various reasons a transaction can be flagged as suspicious.

“According to the AMLC’s own financial intelligence analysis, these unusual and multi-million transactions can be linked to three predicate crimes of money laundering,” De Lima said on April 29.

The Duterte camp has tried to discredit the findings, as one of the two AMLC documents briefly noted that BPI [Bank of the Philippine Islands] requested the deletion of P2.3 billion in CTRs pertaining to Carpio from 2007 to 2026 due to a system bug. The actual amount, BPI said, was just P2.1 million.

It was unclear, however, why AMLC did not revise the total value of CTRs and STRs in its transmittal letter to the justice committee, as well as its more detailed report. Carpio’s total large and suspicious bank transactions stood at P2.998 billion from 2006 to 2025, and P3.1 billion from 2007 to 2026, according to AMLC.

For the account solely managed by the Vice President, the amount of money that flowed through her accounts is P3.7 billion from 2006 to 2025, including P1.8 billion in inflows.

Duterte’s legal team questioned the presentation of the AMLC numbers, saying an aggregate of inflows and outflows over two decades would naturally yield a bloated number.

“I have P1,000 that I deposited then withdrew. The total transaction will be P2,000 even though I have no cash in the bank. It’s that simple,” Duterte’s lawyer Michael Poa insisted on April 23.

“It’s impossible that it is bloated because the reports only capture transactions worth P500,000 and up. So transactions below P500,000 were not declared,” former finance undersecretary Cielo Magno said in her podcast on April 24.

SALN underdeclarations

Despite the billions of pesos in bank transactions over the years, Duterte’s net worth averaged P42 million in 15 years, peaking at P88 million in 2024.

What’s more notable is that she made zero cash and cash declaration deposits from 2019 to 2024, and modest cash on hand and cash in bank declarations during years she was in elective office between 2007 and 2018.

The Duterte camp argued that the Vice President did not necessarily declare zero cash in bank, and claimed that these were just lumped under the “others” category of the SALN declarations.

“Why did you suddenly hide it under ‘others’ when in fact, from 2007 to 2018, it was listed separately as cash on hand and cash in bank?” former state audit commissioner Heidi Mendoza said on Facts First with Christian Esguerra on April 24. “Cash is king…you cannot lump solid assets with liquid assets.”

An alleged drug lord’s payouts

Trillanes has long accused the Duterte family of receiving payouts from businessman Samuel Uy, who has been tagged by the former senator, as well as Davao Death Squad insider Arturo Lascañas, as a drug lord. 

Trillanes claimed that from 2011 to 2013, various members of the Duterte family received P181.6 million in payments from Uy. 

These include P22.3 million supposedly received by the Vice President across three transactions.

Two of these three transactions were in the AMLC report. 

Modest performance of businesses

Lawmakers also compelled the Securities and Exchange Commission to release documents of businesses that Duterte declared in her SALNs, but the companies are either suffering losses, or earning a profit that does not match their bank transaction records.

Duterte’s alleged unexplained wealth is one of the impeachable offenses listed by the House in its articles of impeachment against her, stemming from grounds of betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution. – Rappler.com