Sara Duterte trial recap, Oct. 9: Unexplained wealth pegged at P818 million
MANILA, Philippines — The prosecution presented its final witness against Vice President Sara Duterte on Friday, October 9, a forensic financial analyst who claimed before the Senate impeachment court that the Duterte couple had a whopping P817.87 million in undeclared assets and income from 2022 to 2025.
Alexander Cabrera, a lawyer and accountant who serves as chairman emeritus of PwC’s Philippine member firm Isla Lipana & Co., said the figure was drawn only from bank, tax, anti-money laundering and corporate records obtained through court subpoenas, and excludes documents held by Duterte and her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio.
The figure is the prosecution’s central claim for Article II, which accuses Duterte of amassing wealth beyond her lawful income, misdeclaring her assets and keeping business interests the Constitution bars her from holding. It is more than eight times the P98.66 million net worth the vice president declared in 2025.
The prosecution has announced it would no longer pursue Article III on bribery, making Cabrera the last witness in its presentation of evidence.
The defense, which will cross-examine Cabrera on Monday, questioned his credibility in making a "supposed" forensic report of the vice president's wealth, based on documents it says should not have been handed over to him.
During its turn in presenting witnesses, the defense will also get their chance to call to the stand their own expert witness.
Earlier in the day, a Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) official confirmed the agency is auditing Duterte and Carpio under letters of authority covering up to 20 years of taxes, and that Cale 88 Foods Corp., a banana chip exporter with ties to Carpio, is also under audit.
Here are three highlights from the proceedings.
1. How the P817.87 million adds up
The prosecution had billed Cabrera as the witness who would make sense of nearly a month of testimony from several bank executives, land registrars, and representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
Among them, they put on record huge sums of funds that prosecutors said were missing from Duterte’s SALNs, but none was in a position to say whether it amounted to wealth beyond her lawful income.
Cabrera built his estimated total from four sources: bank balances missing from Duterte’s SALN, undeclared property, bank deposits that exceeded the couple’s declared income, and their share of undeclared income from companies they own.
Duterte and Carpio's undeclared bank balances alone ranged from P23.17 million to P80.70 million a year, most of it in Carpio’s accounts, Cabrera claimed.
Their alleged undeclared property included 17 insurance policies, firearms, real estate and business stakes, he said. Deposits that counted as income totaled P174.96 million from 2022 to 2025, against P63.11 million declared in the couple’s tax returns, he added.
Cabrera also flagged unusual banking activity by the vice president and her husband, the most damning being the manager’s checks worth P96 million allegedly circulated through the couple’s joint account for years before P80 million went into four life insurance policies.
Certain credit card purchases were also flagged as unusual by the witness, such as an alleged single P205,000 payment at the Ginza Inakaya in Tokyo, Japan, as well as two purchases on the same day at Nike SM Davao, totaling more than P300,000.
Cabrera said he counted each asset only once and left out most dollar accounts.
2. Gencorp: over P1 billion in unreported inflows
Cabrera also alleged that Gencorp Industries, a firm Duterte lists in her SALN as a stockholder but whose corporate filings do not name her, left more than P1 billion in bank inflows off its books from 2023 to 2025, equal to 80% to 94% of the revenue it reported.
“Pag ganyan po kalaki ang tinatago niyo, eh fraudulent po iyan (If what you're hiding is that huge, then that is fraudulent),” he said.
Cabrera had cited receipts showing Gencorp runs five Jollibee branches in Davao City despite a capital of only P1.25 million. He attributed 20% of its undeclared income to Duterte, mirroring her stake in Metro City Chow Foods Corp., which shares directors with Gencorp, and called the estimate conservative.
It's Cabrera's theory that Gencorp intentionally kept Duterte’s name off its records because it does business with the Davao City government.
“Kung si VP Sara po ay nakapangalan po sa GIS ng Gencorp, hindi po pwedeng makakuha ng kontrata ang Gencorp po sa City of Davao,” he said.
Her brother, Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte, acknowledged in earlier testimony that the city awarded Gencorp 19 contracts worth about P33.2 million and said he would not have allowed them had he known of her stake.
Several senator-judges themselves had done their own math and raised doubts on the truthfulness of Gencorp's filings in their questions to Anne Garcia Marquez, the chief of staff of the BIR's Office of the Commissioner.
Lacson noted Gencorp reported P520.67 million in 2025 sales but paid only P777,093 in income tax. Sen. Kiko Pangilinan said bank records show Gencorp held P46.19 million at the end of 2023, while its audited statements showed only P924,695.
“They were not being truthful if the bank records show that the ending balance in 2023 is 46 million,” Pangilinan says.
The defense, for its part, drew from Marquez that corporations have separate legal personalities and that their income is not the couple’s.
3. Cale88 and money from China
Cabrera claimed Cale88 understated its revenue by an average of 51% a year, and that P193.95 million of its foreign remittances, more than 80%, came from Chinese companies.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros also revealed that based on her team's research, one Ukrainian remitter to Cale88 matches a company under criminal investigation in Kyiv for fraud and money laundering, and that its last transfer to Cale88 came after that case was opened in May 2025.
Sen. Joel Villanueva noted that Cale88 reported P150 million in sales in 2024 with only two employees on record. Marquez said that seemed "impossible" and guessed it would take several machines to power their operations with such a lean workforce.
The BIR’s audit will check whether Cale88 under-declared sales, which could lead to deficiency taxes or, if evasion is proven, a criminal case, she said.
The AMLC’s executive director testified earlier this week that Cale88 could be a money laundering candidate, subject to further investigation.
Overall, Cabrera laid down five main conclusions from his findings:
- Duterte’s SALNs from 2022 to 2025 “were untruthful";
- She “continued to participate in various businesses” as vice president;
- Her unexplained wealth amounts to P817.87 million “based only on the limited documents examined";
- The violations “establish the pattern of constitutional violations year-on-year";
- Other laws, including the Tax Code, “were violated or may have been violated.”
Presiding officer Sen. Chiz Escudero reminded prosecutors that because no subpoena was issued to Cabrera, they must bring him back for cross-examination on Monday, warning that his testimony “would be useless” otherwise.
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