A nineteenth financial transaction cited in documents submitted by former senator Antonio Trillanes IV has been confirmed by the Anti-Money Laundering Council, raising the tally of verified monetary movements in the Vice President’s case by one from the 18 confirmed during the previous hearing.
Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro, who chairs the House committee on justice, disclosed the updated count during her opening statement at Wednesday’s third clarificatory hearing on the two impeachment complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte.
“This is not a stroke of luck, not a coincidence. This is a confirmation. Before, it seemed mere gossip. But now, there is an official record showing that Trillanes’ allegations have matched official records; it seems the truth became clear,” Luistro said.
The confirmation follows a procedure carried out during the April 22 hearing, where Mamamayang Liberal Party-list Rep. Leila de Lima randomly selected 18 transactions from Trillanes’ annexes and asked AMLC to verify whether each appeared in its records. AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura confirmed all 18, noting that the agency could only state whether a transfer of the same amount occurred on the same date — not disclose any details about its nature or origin.
“Ten years — that is how long Senator Trillanes waited for his time. That is how long people have doubted his allegations — allegations about the billions of pesos inside the accounts of Dutertes,” Luistro said.
Several committee members have characterized the combined testimony of Trillanes and AMLC as evidence sufficient to establish probable cause for impeachment. Bicol Saro party-list Rep. Terry Ridon went further in an interview on Tuesday, saying the proceedings had moved well beyond the threshold of a smoking gun.
“In the previous week, I was being asked if I saw it as a smoking gun. What I said earlier was it is no longer a smoking gun, it is a nuclear bomb, because there was P6.7 billion in total transactions, P4.4 billion in inflows, or money entering the bank accounts of the couple, P1.5 billion that went out from the couple’s banks,” Ridon said.
Wednesday’s session was set to focus on a separate ground in the impeachment complaints — the allegation that Duterte threatened the lives of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos, and former House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
Earlier hearings touched on the alleged misuse of confidential funds, with the April 14 session drawing on a supplemental affidavit from Duterte’s former aide Ramil Madriaga. Madriaga alleged that Duterte directed him in December 2022 to coordinate cash deliveries to locations including a comedy bar in Quezon City, a drop point in San Pablo, Laguna, and the Office of the Ombudsman parking lot — with four large duffel bags reportedly containing P30 million to P35 million each. Madriaga said the P125 million confidential fund allocation for 2022 was liquidated in a single day, not the 11 days officially reported.
Luistro said that if no further hearing dates are added, the committee could proceed to a vote on the existence of probable cause.
