An interjection from Senator-Judge Alan Peter Cayetano pushed back against the framing of the Office of the Vice President’s cash encashments as inherently improper, as he argued that a transaction being out of the ordinary carries no automatic finding of wrongdoing. “Just because a withdrawal is unusual ‘doesn’t mean it’s illegal,'” he said during the proceedings.
To ground the point, Cayetano drew on his own tenure heading the Department of Foreign Affairs, recounting that he once phoned the president of Land Bank to arrange the release of as much as P100 million. The money, he explained, was needed to help travelers left stranded at ports and airports when a storm disrupted transport.
The remark came as the Senate impeachment court moved into the tenth day of Vice President Sara Duterte’s trial, with Article I on the handling of confidential funds now under examination. Former LandBank Shaw Boulevard branch manager Violeta Constantino, who ran the branch from May 2017 until retiring in January 2025, appeared as the first witness on that article.
Constantino’s testimony centered on four checks, each valued at P125 million and made out to OVP special disbursing officer Gina F. Acosta. The checks carried dates of December 20, 2022, January 31, 2023, April 18, 2023, and July 13, 2023, all drawn against the OVP’s account. “I oversaw this encashment when I was the branch manager,” she told the court.
Pressed by Senator-Judge Erwin Tulfo on whether such activity fit the pattern of ordinary government agency dealings, the former manager said the encashments departed from what she typically saw. Questioning from Senator-Judge Risa Hontiveros drew out a sharper detail: across 32 years at the state bank, Constantino had never before processed a single cash withdrawal reaching P125 million.
Senator-Judge Panfilo Lacson, drawing on his background as a former national police chief, flagged the timing and frequency as strange. He observed that the withdrawals followed a quarterly rhythm, with the earliest landing just ahead of Christmas. “What I know is if there’s a need because there’s an intelligence gathering operation, only then would you need money. I’m wondering why it was so regular, and the first [withdrawal] happened just before Christmas,” he said in Filipino.
