The math simply isn’t mathing for the Senate impeachment court when it examined ₱4.4 billion in bank transactions tied to Vice President Sara Duterte and her husband, Manases Carpio, and flagged by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC).
Court presiding officer Francis Escudero and Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian confronted AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura about discrepancies and an “unusual pattern,” respectively, in the bank transactions on Tuesday, Oct. 6.
Escudero sought an explanation for why the Duterte couple’s declared wealth in the Vice President’s statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALNs) between 2022 and 2025 fell short of the reported cash movement in their bank accounts.
Gatchalian, on the other hand, was stumped by an “unusual pattern” that the bulk of ₱3.3 billion in her suspicious and covered transactions were reported from 2009 to 2013.
Buenaventura appeared for the second day of Duterte’s trial on the second article of the impeachment dealing with her alleged unexplained wealth.
Ending bank balance
On Day 34 of the proceedings, House private prosecutor James Bryan Ibrahim Alih told the court that Duterte and her husband had 30 bank accounts from eight banks with a total ending balance of over ₱190 million from 2022 to 2025 but “was not declared in her SALNs.”
Before Buenaventura took the witness stand, defense lawyer Mark Vinluan apologized to the senator-judges, some of whom had admonished him the other day for threatening criminal liability against the AMLC official, the media, and “end users” of the confidential information about Duterte’s bank records.
“In all humility, Your Honors, our intention in cross-examining is the credibility of the witness, and part of testing the credibility is to confront him not only with documents but with salient provisions of the law so that we can demonstrate whether his interpretation or application of the law is correct,” Vinluan said.
When he read “portions of the law” during his cross-examination of Buenaventura, he said he never intended to intimidate anyone, especially members of the impeachment court.
“If, in any way, a different message was indirectly conveyed, I personally apologize and will be more circumspect moving forward,” Vinluan said.
Resuming his cross-examination of Buenaventura, the defense lawyer asked if the tabular summaries the witness presented on the Dutertes’ bank records were “conclusive proof” of their ill-gotten wealth. Buenaventura made it clear that the figures were based on transactions reported to the AMLC.
The AMLC official said he had no personal knowledge of the Vice President’s SALNs after Vinluan asked him whether the tabulations were not conclusive proof of her true wealth as declared in the SALNs.
“I am only testifying as indicated only on the records regarding the bank transactions,” Buenaventura said.
‘Absurd possibility’
Escudero told the witness that he added up the Vice President’s SALNs from 2022 to 2025 “to bring things into absurd possibility” given that AMLC reported that the couple’s combined bank inflows and outflows totaled ₱424 million in the same period.
The sum was “₱336 million and change,” far from the ₱424 million, based on the premise that the couple had no spending and kept their money in the banks, he said.
“In the realm of possibility, what would explain this huge amount?” he asked Buenaventura. The AMLC official said he couldn’t answer because he has not seen Duterte’s SALNs.
Escudero said he also compared the ₱4.4 billion in flagged bank transactions with Duterte’s SALNs for the same period, and it totaled only ₱840 million. The flagged ₱4.4 billion was five times greater than Duterte’s net worth, he said.
“[H]ow could it reach such an amount, knowing her highest declared wealth was ₱98 million in 2025, and lowest in 2007 at ₱7 million?” Escudero said. Buenaventura said he could not explain or answer, as he was only relying on the records.
Gatchalian asked whether the AMLC looked into an “unusual pattern” in the Duterte couple’s flagged bank transactions from 2009 to 2013. He noted that the ₱2.7 billion in transactions comprised 70%–80% of the ₱3.3 billion in flagged transactions.
“It’s an unusual trend compared to the others, where the average is a ₱40 million transaction. This, however, is ₱2.7 billion in a span of five years,” Gatchalian said.
He asked Buenaventura if the AMLC is investigating, even though it happened years ago. The witness said his office “in general, looks into transactions that suddenly ballooned,” adding that this was part of its analysis.
Chinese connection
Vinluan asked Buenaventura whether the AMLC records show China-based entities mentioned in the food corporation Cale88, owned by Carpio, represented China or the Chinese government. “There was no mention of it,” he replied.
“In other words, in line with your testimony, there are no records of AMLC showing China as a country that funneled funds (to the company),” Vinluan asked. Buenaventura said that “based on the record, there is no showing.”
But Senator-judge Risa Hontiveros told Buenaventura that her office looked into the Chinese companies that remitted money to Cale88 and found that they were linked to the Chinese government.
One of the companies, she said, was China National Township Enterprises (CNTE), which, based on her office’s research, used to be directly under the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture.
CNTE became a large state-owned agricultural enterprise under the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, according to Hontiveros.
“According to the public profiles of CNTE, it was committed to serving the country’s Belt and Road initiative and foreign policy,” she said.
Hontiveros also cited Beijing Zhenweifang Food Co. Ltd., owned by Xinjiang Fruit Industry Group and a “confirmed Series A investor.”
“Why is this important? It’s because the Xinjiang Group is not an ordinary company,” she said, adding that it was a Chinese state-owned enterprise and “advances the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.”
She said Xinjiang has a corporate government structure that has Chinese Communist Party organizations embedded.
The senator-judge said the chair of Beijing Zhenweifang Food Co. Ltd. is a member of the district Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
Citing a US economic and security report, she said CPPCC delegates “serve as proxies of the Chinese Communist Party interests and frequently act as interlocutors with foreign government officials, with businesses, academe and other institutions.”
In Canada, the CPPCC is said to be the “premier overt united front organization,” she pointed out.
Hontiveros asked Buenaventura whether the AMLC is looking into these Chinese linkages, but he replied that its report was based only on documents covering the subpoenas issued by the impeachment court. CS
Read more: ₱4.4B in bank transactions tied to Duterte, husband flagged by AMLC
