Evidence on dropped impeachment raps going to ombudsman

MANILA, Philippines — Documentary and testimonial evidence against Vice President Sara Duterte on the three impeachment charges House prosecutors have dropped will be turned over to the ombudsman for possible prosecution of criminal offenses.

Manila 3rd district Rep. Joel Chua over the weekend said they would comply with the call of Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla for the turnover of all the necessary evidence, hinting this may even involve non-bailable plunder charges based on the P612.5-million confidential funds alone.

“To begin with, this involves P612.5 million. This simply is too high from the threshold of plunder (which is P50 million). Aside from this, of course, there is also the possible charge of malversation (of public funds), and so forth and so on,” he pointed out during a weekly news forum over the weekend.

Malversation of public funds involves the unlawful appropriation, taking or misuse of public funds or property other than for its original purpose by an accountable public officer, requiring probers to establish the specific acts and circumstances supporting the alleged infraction.

The alleged reckless use of confidential funds from the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education is among the three charges that prosecutors have dropped, along with grave threats and direct bribery of education officials.

Duterte in November 2024 threatened to have President Marcos, First Lady Liza Marcos and former speaker Martin Romualdez killed if she herself would be assassinated.This was after her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez was held in contempt and held at the House of Representatives.

“To put into perspective: it doesn’t necessarily mean that when we dropped the articles, the VP will already be free from any accountability. This will of course continue in other ways, like through the criminal proceedings (in the ombudsman),” Chua stressed.

Layman’s terms

The defense, on the other hand, is looking to simplify the discussion on the remaining Article of Impeachment, which is expected to be numbers-heavy.

“I think if there is anything we would like to do in our presentation, we would like to laymanize things and maybe simplify things to be able to understand it better, because in many of these things, you just need to show logic. If we can establish that, without going into the technicalities, that is something that we look forward to doing,” defense spokesman Michael Poa said in an interview over radio dzMM.

Poa did not disclose the number of witnesses that the defense would present, but it is expected that they would have their own financial expert.