Vice President Sara Duterte on Monday, August 17, 2026, filed a second perjury complaint against Ramil Madriaga, her alleged former aide, before the Taguig City Prosecutor’s Office, extending her legal campaign against a man who has emerged as a central accuser in her impeachment.
Duterte personally appeared at the prosecutor’s office to lodge the complaint, accompanied by her legal counsel, Atty. Salvador Paolo Panelo Jr. The complaint, filed under Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code, targets Madriaga’s supplemental affidavit — the document he submitted to the House Committee on Justice’s clarificatory hearing in April 2026, where the panel was weighing probable cause on the impeachment complaints against Duterte. Panelo said the affidavit was dated April 11, 2026.
According to Panelo, the complaint runs to roughly 1,000 pages and draws on the sworn testimony of the vice president and 12 corroborating witnesses to challenge Madriaga’s account. GMA News Online reported that Panelo described the affidavit as containing “malicious and deliberate falsehoods.” Panelo said the filing “had to be done to ensure that Madriaga is held accountable under the law, and to unmask the malicious, baseless, and desperate character of the impeachment effort against the Vice President and of those behind it.”
Madriaga, who has identified himself as a former aide and “bagman” for Duterte, has alleged that her 2022 campaign was funded by drug money and by Philippine offshore gaming operators. In his supplemental affidavit, he claimed that bags containing up to P35 million each were delivered to various locations, and that the Office of the Vice President’s P125 million in confidential funds was spent in less than 24 hours rather than over 11 days. Duterte has categorically denied the allegations, maintaining that Madriaga was never her aide, employee, or member of her staff.
Monday’s filing is the second perjury case Duterte has brought against Madriaga. She filed the first on March 4, 2026, also before the Taguig City Prosecutor’s Office, over a separate affidavit that Madriaga notarized on November 29, 2025, and submitted to the Office of the Ombudsman that December. At that filing, Duterte said “fabricated stories must not be allowed to deceive the public.” Madriaga’s camp has questioned the timing of her complaints and warned that a perjury case should not be used as a tool to intimidate or silence critics and whistleblowers, adding that he is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Madriaga is currently detained at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City, where he has been held since July 2023 on a kidnapping-for-ransom charge. His affidavits have become key evidence in the impeachment case against Duterte, which is now being tried before the Senate. That trial, in its second month, centers on allegations that Duterte misused P612.5 million in confidential funds — P500 million from the Office of the Vice President and P112.5 million from the Department of Education during her tenure as education secretary.
