Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV and the civil society group The Silent Majority (TSM) have filed a plunder and malversation complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte that could feed a fresh impeachment case against her, alleging that she misused ₱650 million in confidential funds and received bribes from a suspected drug lord when she was mayor of Davao City.
Trillanes and several TSM members submitted their “verified complaint” to the Office of the Ombudsman on Wednesday, Jan. 21, containing a nine-point allegation against Duterte.
“This complaint shows, first, that the total amount plundered or squandered by Sara Duterte is comparable to the largest flood control scandals, and therefore deserves the same degree of scrutiny,” Trillanes told reporters after filing the complaint.
“Second, that the embezzlement by Inday is a pattern of behavior dating back to when she was vice mayor of Davao City, which she carried over [to the vice presidency]—a behavior that is alarming given her position as the second-highest official of the land,” he added. (“Inday” or “Inday Sara” is Duterte’s nickname.)
TSM founder and president Jocelyn “Jozy” Marie Acosta read out the nine points of the complaint against the Vice President, which echoed similar criminal charges filed against Duterte last December, also at the Office of the Ombudsman, by a coalition of activist groups, academics and church leaders led by two Roman Catholic priests.
Acosta said the complaint they filed against Duterte includes charges of:
• Plunder and malversation of ₱650 million as Vice President and education secretary
• Plunder and malversation of ₱2.735 billion during her term as Davao City mayor
• Graft and malversation concerning ₱8 billion worth of overpriced laptops when she was education secretary
• Graft and gross incompetence for the more than ₱12 billion disallowances imposed by the Commission on Audit
• Graft due to unliquidated ₱7 billion in cash advances when she was education secretary
• Graft and gross incompetence for only 182 classrooms built out of the Department of Education’s target of 6,500
• Ill-gotten wealth and non-declaration of over ₱2 billion deposits and assets excluded from her statement of assets, liabilities and net worth
• Bribery and corruption for allegedly receiving payoffs from a drug lord while she was mayor
• Betrayal of public trust and being unfit for public office in connection with two “public meltdowns” where she threatened the life of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
“Sara Duterte has committed many violations of our laws, the Constitution and the trust of the Filipino people, which have all been brushed aside but should no longer be tolerated,” Acosta said in a statement she read at the lobby of the Ombudsman’s building in Quezon City.
‘Primary reason’ for popularity
In response to a reporter who asked why, despite all prior allegations against her, Duterte remains more popular than the President, Trillanes said: “The primary reason why she is popular is that the Filipino people do not know Sara Duterte’s true personality.”
“This is one of the ways to expose the different incidents of corruption and other anomalies that Sara has been engaged in. And hopefully, they would be enlightened,” he said, adding that he and his colleagues would continue to awaken the public. “These allegations are no joke,” he said.
Trillanes said the criminal complaint would be “parallel” to plans for a new impeachment complaint against Duterte. The Supreme Court last year nullified the impeachment complaint transmitted by the House of Representatives to the Senate for violating the constitutional one-year bar rule.
There was no immediate response from Duterte regarding this second accusation of plunder. Reacting to similar allegations in the articles of impeachment filed against her last year, she had said that she was looking forward to a “blood bath” but asked the high court to throw out the complaint.
According to Trillanes, impeachment is an “administrative” action to remove an official, whereas the criminal complaint will hold Duterte accountable for violations of the law with imprisonment as penalty.
The 41-page complaint itself points out that all public officers, including the vice president, could be subjected to investigation and prosecution by the Ombudsman as there is no law or jurisprudence that shields a vice president.
The Ombudsman cannot remove or discipline impeachable officials, but it can investigate them and recommend that Congress start the impeachment process or file criminal cases at the Sandiganbayan.
Madriaga’s affidavit
Among the most serious charges that Trillanes and the TSM made against Duterte are her alleged misuse of up to ₱650 million in confidential funds from the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) from June 2022–December 2023.
They said that when Duterte was confronted during the House quad committee hearings to account for the confidential funds, she “stonewalled” and gave “evasive responses, made snide remarks, resorted to ad hominem personal attacks, off-tangent jokes and generally displayed a provocative, combative and condescending demeanor” toward the lawmakers.
A key piece of evidence cited by Trillanes and the TSM was the Nov. 29, 2025, affidavit of Ramil Madriaga, a former intelligence and election campaign operator who was supposedly assigned to Duterte by her father, then President Rodrigo Duterte, when she was mayor of Davao City and seeking the vice presidency.
Trillanes and the TSM said Madriaga “confessed and expressly admitted” that the vice-presidential security chief, Col. Raymund Dante Lachica, told him to deliver “large sums of money” from the confidential funds of the OVP and the DepEd to several people upon Duterte’s supposed instructions.
This clearly confirmed how Duterte “actually converted and diverted the subject confidential funds for their own personal use,” they said.
Madriaga’s affidavit, they added, “clearly bolsters and substantiates, if not convincingly proves beyond the shadow of any doubt,” that Duterte committed “plunder and/or malversation of public funds” and that these are “proper grounds” for impeachment.
Madriaga’s lawyers themselves submitted his affidavit to the Ombudsman in December 2025, asking that the allegations he made be investigated.
‘Gargantuan’ funds
But prior to the alleged misuse of the OVP’s confidential funds, Duterte had already allegedly plundered ₱2.735 billion in confidential funds as mayor of Davao City for 11 years, according to the complaint filed by Trillanes and the TSM. The amount was over ₱400 million yearly just from 2018 to 2021.
The complaint said that Duterte’s city administrator then, Zuleika Lopez, who later became her chief of staff in the OVP, was unable to explain to House lawmakers where the “gargantuan” confidential and intelligence funds were supposed to have been spent.
Per the complaint, Duterte and members of her family received checks from a businessman with known connections to a suspected drug lord. In her case, the Vice President allegedly received two checks on Oct. 25, 2011, and April 23, 2012, each amounting exactly to ₱7, 440,846.07.
Trillanes called on Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla to give attention to the complaint they had filed. He said the investigation of their complaint was one way to open Duterte’s bank accounts through the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
“Our countrymen must be alarmed about this,” the former senator said. “This is not just talk. This is not ruining reputation because if that were the case, we’ll just do that on Facebook. We brought this to the Ombudsman.” CS
