MANILA, Philippines — The Senate impeachment court held its longest hearing yet on Monday, October 5, where the Anti-Money Laundering Council's chief testified to P4.4 billion in reported transactions involving Vice President Sara Duterte and her husband, including P319 million in remittances from China to his food company.
AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura testified as a prosecution witness under Article II of the impeachment complaint. That article accuses Duterte of amassing wealth "manifestly disproportionate to her lawful income," and of failing to fully and truthfully disclose her and her husband's assets in her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) for 2022, 2023 and 2024.
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His testimony took up the entire eight-hour session and drew repeated objections from the defense and sharp exchanges among senator-judges over whether the records should be disclosed at all.
The AMLC presentation had been moved from October 1 at the defense's request, after prosecutors also dropped former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV from their witness list.
Monday's hearing came as House prosecutors have confirmed they would no longer present Article III, the bribery charge.
Here are the four highlights from the proceedings on Monday, October 5.
1. Court allows AMLC records, including dollar accounts, over objections
Before Buenaventura could testify, defense counsel Mark Vinluan moved to exclude him on the basis of the confidentiality provision in the Anti-Money Laundering Act, which bars the AMLC from revealing information in any manner.
The defense had attempted to convince the court that the AMLA provisions do not single out impeachment as an exception to its "absolute" prohibition for sharing AMLC records.
Presiding Officer Sen. Chiz Escudero denied the motion and sided with the prosecution in ruling that confidentiality provisions do not make AMLC reports "absolutely immune from compulsory process."
The impeachment court ruled that Section 8A "regulates the manner and conditions of disclosure" but "does not command absolute silence under every circumstance."
Escudero cited the Supreme Court's ruling in Republic v. Sandiganbayan and the Bank Secrecy Law's express exception for impeachment cases, which he said confirms "that bank secrecy is not an absolute bar to the constitutional accountability process."
He limited Buenaventura's testimony to the subpoenaed reports and said parts could be heard behind closed doors if needed. "This ruling does not authorize unrestricted public disclosure," Escudero said.
The ruling divided the senator-judges. Sen. Pia Cayetano noted that the anti-money laundering law, unlike the bank secrecy law, contains no exception for impeachment. She said reading one into it "puts a cloud over the impeachment proceedings." Sen. Imee Marcos similarly argued there was "no mention of an exception for impeachment proceedings."
Sen. Kiko Pangilinan, one of the law's two primary sponsors in 2001, said lawmakers intended the confidentiality rule to bind banks and not the AMLC. He said it "would be absurd that a private bank in an impeachment case trial can be compelled to divulge bank records" while the AMLC could not.
The dispute resurfaced in the afternoon, when Buenaventura, on direct examination, was made to testify on the figures of a foreign currency account. Marcos objected, saying it was "well established in both the Erap and Corona impeachments that foreign currency accounts are excluded."
Escudero overruled her with a prepared ruling that said the confidentiality provisions of the Foreign Currency Deposit Act must be read in tandem with the Anti-Money Laundering Act. Since banks are required to report covered and suspicious transactions to the AMLC regardless of currency, that means such information cannot be concealed by the council from the impeachment court.
The presiding officer also cited the 2012 impeachment trial of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, where then Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales was allowed to testify on an AMLC report on the chief justice's foreign currency accounts.
2. What the AMLC records showed
Divinagracia said the records were meant to establish a baseline of Duterte's wealth and a "pattern of non-disclosure."
According to the AMLC summary, covered and suspicious transaction reports involving Duterte and her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio, totaled P4.4 million from 2007 to 2025.
Buenaventura said about P1.63 billion of this was money coming into the accounts and P1.31 billion was money going out. The remaining P1.46 billion consisted of "fund transactions that could not be reliably classified as inflows or outflows due to insufficient, incomplete, or ambiguous sender and or beneficiary information," most of them from before 2014.
He said the total was lower than the roughly P6.7 billion the AMLC reported earlier because the court's subpoena covered a different period and all reporting institutions, not just banks, and because one bank, the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), corrected its reports.
Escudero had the AMLC chief confirm that the figures cover only covered and suspicious transactions and would not mirror the full bank records.
Buenaventura testified that seven inter-account transfers totalling P193.71 million, all in a single day on March 28, 2014, involved a BPI joint account of former President Rodrigo Duterte and the vice president.
He also identified a P20-million cash purchase of a life insurance policy on April 1, 2014, a debit of nearly P9.8 million from the same joint account in 2011, and a withdrawal of more than P9 million in 2013.
Buenaventura also confirmed that more recent records showed large cash movements in her or her husband's bank accounts during her term as vice president.
Six transactions all in a single day on Aug. 6, 2024, specifically two check encashments and four over-the-counter withdrawals of between P3 million and P15 million each, took P41 million out of her husband Manases Carpio's account in a single day.
Reports in the vice president's records showed a P2.37-million withdrawal at Landbank on Dec. 5, 2024. On Dec. 20, 2024, a P5.97-million withdrawal at BDO and a P1.7-million check encashment at Metrobank followed, 11 days before December 31, the cutoff date for assets declared in officials' SALNs.
Buenaventura also testified that Cale88 Foods Corp., the banana chips exporter company of Duterte's husband, received P319.33 million in remittances from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Broken down, the AMLC chief confirmed that of the 143 covered transaction reports on those remittances, 141 involved China and two involved Hong Kong.
The amount is close to the figure Trillanes presented at a press conference last week after withdrawing as a witness.
The records named Jinhua Dongxi Trading Co., Ltd. and China National Township among the counterparties.
Cale88 was among the companies Duterte declared she was a stockholder of in her SALN.
An AMLC information-sharing report also listed the vice president as the beneficiary of checks worth P14.88 million bought in 2011 and 2012 by Samuel Cang Uy and two others.
3. Suspicious transaction reports show Duterte's transactions were flagged by banks
The trial took a more surprising turn when the prosecution drew out Buenaventura's testimony on the suspicious transaction reports filed on the vice president.
Several of these reports on Duterte that were read in court were filed by banks and insurers on the basis of news reports, action that Buenaventura said is within the ambit of these institutions given the "threshold is suspicion" but which some senator-judges called unreliable.
Under the anti-money laundering law, banks and other institutions must file a covered transaction report for any cash transaction above P500,000 in a single banking day. A suspicious transaction report is filed when the institution sees red flags, regardless of the amount.
Buenaventura said the AMLC holds 34 suspicious transaction reports on Duterte from 2007 to 2025, while at least 30 such reports involved her husband, bringing the total to 55 for the couple.
The prosecutor had Buenaventura read some of the suspicious transaction reports.
For instance, two 2019 transactions by Duterte involving insurance premium payments to Mercantile Insurance Company Inc. were flagged for "graft and corrupt practices" after "several news outlets recently released a list of individuals and corporations identified as being involved in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) flood control issue."
Buenaventura also read a suspicious transaction report filed by BDO Life Assurance on a Dec. 5, 2024 transaction, which cites "malversation of public funds and property."
Reading the narrative, the AMLC chief says: "The client is alleged to have misappropriated confidential funds to her office in the Office of the Vice President (OVP)."
Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano faulted the AMLC for passing on the reports and equated them to reading out "baseless rumors" in open court.
However, Sen. Kiko Pangilinan said he preferred to give banks the "benefit of the doubtm" while Sen. Risa Hontiveros said she would wait for testimony from the banks and the BIR before dismissing the banks' reports as rumors.
Pia Cayetano objected to the prosecution's on-screen summaries of the reports, saying they "do not show an accurate picture of what the witness is testifying to." She said: "This is like reading volume two of a comics and I never even saw volume one of the comic book."
4. Defense questions AMLC chief's authority; senator-judges push back
In cross-examination, Vinluan established that Buenaventura heads only the AMLC secretariat. He is not a member of the council itself, which consists of the Bangko Sentral governor, the insurance commissioner and the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, and which must act unanimously.
Buenaventura confirmed he was appointed on April 14, 2026, eight days before he disclosed the couple's records to the House justice committee on April 22.
Asked whether the three council members gave him written authority for that disclosure and for his testimony on Monday, Buenaventura said he relied on information-sharing guidelines the council approved in 2022 and that he informed the council by memo. He said the House did not ask for such authority.
When Vinluan cited the administrative and criminal penalties under the anti-money laundering law, Divinagracia objected that he was bordering on badgering the witness. Sen. Raffy Tulfo then accused the defense of repeatedly trying to draw out redundant answers from Buenaventura and intimidating him.
Pangilinan said it was uncalled for to raise possible criminal liability over disclosures the court had already authorized. He also called out the defense for seemingly attempting to intimidate the impeachment court itself.
The defense will continue its cross-examination of Buenaventura on Tuesday, October 6.