All about money

In the end, it was all about money.

As a lawyer and as a politician, Vice President Sara Z. Duterte rises and falls on the issue of money – taxpayers’ money stolen from the people, drug money, foreign lobby money, illegal money, ill-gotten money, dirty money, unexplained wealth. Sara’s money – or wealth – now totals P1.5 billion, conservatively.

Sara, 48, is a certifiable billionaire. At that age, the country’s quintessential entrepreneurs, taipans Henry Sy Sr. and John Gokongwei Jr., could not yet claim without contradiction that they were certifiable billionaires. Tatang Henry and John made money the old-fashioned way – through hard and honest work, from dawn to late hours of the night.

The House prosecution has reduced its impeachment case against Sara to just one article – Article II, unexplained wealth. The prosecution has withdrawn or dropped three of its four Articles of Impeachment – Article I, misuse of P612.5-million confidential and intelligence funds; III, bribery and IV, grave threats.

Article II covers three sweeping issues: a) Sara amassed unexplained wealth manifestly disproportionate to her lawful income and earnings during her incumbency; b) she failed to fully and truthfully disclose all her and her spouse’s assets, liabilities and net worth in her statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024 and c) she failed to divest and instead willfully continued all her business interests during her tenure as vice president for the years 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

To prove Article II, the prosecution presented on Oct. 9, 2026, its final witness, CPA-lawyer Alexander B. Cabrera. His job was to trace Sara’s money, how she generated it, how she tried to hide it, how she spent it and why her actions and schemes in handling all that money should convince the 20-member Senate impeachment court to convict Sara, remove her as vice president and ban her forever from any public office or any dealing that requires the expenditure of people’s money. In short, the pariah of Philippine politics.

Prosecutor Rep. Chel Diokno said Cabrera is experienced in the conduct of financial audits, reviews and investigations.

“Ang aming testigo ay mapagkakatiwalaan dahil siya ay may integridad. Hindi po siya iyong tipong expert na pinulot lang kung saan-saan. His credentials and trustworthiness are, in our view, impeccable,” prided Diokno. Cabrera has 38 years of professional experience, including forensic, fraud discovery and mergers and acquisitions. When Sara was the Davao City mayor, Cabrera helped in amending Davao’s investment code. So Cabrera and Sara know each other.

On Oct. 9, Cabrera told the impeachment court that Sara and her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio, had unexplained wealth of P817.87 million. On Oct. 12, the second day of his testimony, Cabrera increased his estimate of Sara’s unexplained wealth to P1.5 billion, to include the P475 million of missing confidential and intelligence funds which the VP could not account for properly.

An expert in forensic financial accounting or crimes involving money, Cabrera was the final prosecution witness, pro bono, for the following reasons, according to Diokno:

1. He is qualified to follow the money and reconcile the financial records. The witness possesses the education, professional qualifications, specialized training experience and technical expertise necessary to examine financial records, trace transactions, reconcile income and assets, analyze financial relationships and identify material discrepancies among financial documents. His expertise is to follow the money.

2. He examined the Respondent Sara Duterte’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth or SALNs, income tax returns and other tax records, bank records, anti-money laundering reports, corporate documents, audited financial statements and other subpoenaed official or publicly available records.

3. He used recognized financial and accounting methods to test whether these records reconcile. The witness applies recognized methods of financial analysis, reconciliation, transaction tracing and accounting analysis to compare the Respondent’s documented income and sources of funds against her assets, financial transactions, investments and business interests.

After a rigorous analysis of pertinent records, Cabrera arrived at the following conclusions:

1. Vice President Sara Duterte’s SALNs for the years 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 were untruthful, with a substantial amount of assets belonging to the Respondent and spouse found to be unreported.

2. VP Sara Duterte, during her vice presidency, continued to participate in various businesses.

3. Her unexplained wealth, based only on the limited documents examined, excluding documents in the possession of Sara and her spouse, amounts to P818.87 million (later updated to P1.5 billion).

4. Sara’s infringements happened in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 and established a pattern of constitutional violations year on year.

5. Apart from the Constitution, Sara might have violated other laws such as the National Internal Revenue Code, Republic Act 1379, Republic Act 6713, Republic Act 3019, Republic Act 12009, Securities Regulation Code rules and Commission on Audit rules.

The other witnesses in Article II presented the underlying records: SALN, corporate records from the SEC, records of firearms from the Philippine National Police, records of the Anti-Money Laundering Council, banks and insurance companies and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

“Attorney Cabrera connected the dots and provided this Court with the big picture,” said Diokno.

Alex Cabrera finished high school at Our Lady of Peace School, Antipolo and college in 1986 at Manila’s Philippine School of Business and Accountancy, one of the leading accounting schools. He took the CPA board in 1987 and became a CPA in 1988. He began as a staff auditor at Joaquin Cunanan & Co. (later named Isla Lipana & Co., now 104 years old) with an initial monthly salary of P2,375. He rose to become managing partner for tax, vice chairman and chairman before retiring as the firm’s first chairman emeritus. An affiliate of PriceWaterhouse, Isla Lipana specialized in assurance, audit, tax, deals, corporate finance and consulting services.

As a working student, Cabrera finished law at Ateneo in 1994. He became a forensic audit and fraud specialist. He also trained at Harvard.

Want to catch thieves in government? Follow the money.

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