Twenty-three firearms registered to Vice President Sara Duterte and another 29 under her husband Manases Carpio went unlisted in their statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, House prosecutors disclosed Tuesday, June 16, as they prepared their case for the impeachment trial.
Bicol Saro Rep. Terry Ridon, who heads the public accounts committee, framed the omission rather than the weapons themselves as the central concern. “This is very important to us because these should not have been concealed, these should have been listed in her SALNs basically because she is no less than the Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines,” he told reporters.
The 52 weapons vary in make and caliber and carry Philippine National Police registration. Ridon said the prosecution intends to seek a subpoena for the firearms records once proceedings begin, and signaled that an official from the PNP’s Firearms and Explosives Office would be called to testify alongside the dealers who sold the guns, so their value could be established. He added: “This will be among the properties we will be requesting for a subpoena when the trial starts. As far as we are concerned, this may not be totally relevant to us as to why do they have so many firearms, but the point here is these were not declared in her SALNs.”
Drawing a parallel to precedent, Ridon invoked the impeachment conviction of the late chief justice Renato Corona, which rested on SALN non-declaration. “We really have to be fair here. It has to be the same treatment, the non-disclosure of our VP in her SALNs.”
Lead prosecutor Rep. Gerville Luistro anticipated stiff resistance to the prosecution’s effort to put bank executives and Anti-Money Laundering Council officials on the stand over Duterte’s reported P6.7-billion in total assets. She recalled that Duterte’s camp had already responded to the justice committee hearings by lodging criminal complaints against the lawmakers, alleging they breached confidentiality provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering Act. “As early as now, we anticipate already that we will feel the challenge during presentation here in the unexplained wealth. As a matter of fact, if you remember during the justice committee hearing, they filed criminal cases against us,” Luistro said. She expects most of the roughly 50 prosecution witnesses to be hostile, drawn from people who served under Duterte at the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education.
Defense spokesman Michael Poa confirmed the Duterte team had filed its own list of witnesses and documentary evidence but withheld specifics, pointing to the impeachment court’s rules. “We have submitted all of our witnesses that we are looking to present, documentary evidence that we are looking to present,” he said, adding that the team was “following the process” and awaiting the pre-trial conference.
Separately, the couple’s 2025 SALN reviewed by The Philippine STAR placed their declared net worth at P98.66 million, up roughly P10 million from the P88.512 million logged a year earlier. The increase traces largely to a P10-million San Juan City condominium unit with a parking slot that Duterte acquired during the year. As in 2024, she again reported no cash on hand or in the bank.
Gross assets reached P122.797 million, split between P81.308 million in real property and P41.488 million in personal property, against liabilities that climbed to P24.141 million — more than twice the P9.95 million owed the previous year. The filing itemized 31 real property holdings spanning lots, houses, land and condominium units, eleven of them under Carpio’s name and two under the couple’s children, whose identities were redacted.
