Officer-in-Charge of the Ombudsman’s Records Division, lawyer Karen Batu, testified Tuesday that Vice President Sara Duterte listed no cash on hand or in bank across seven straight years of her wealth declarations, spanning 2019 through 2025.
Batu appeared as the prosecution’s second witness on Article II of the impeachment complaint, taking the stand on the 25th day of Duterte’s trial before the Senate impeachment court. Because the Ombudsman’s office keeps the official records of every public official’s Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN), she was summoned to attest to the authenticity of Duterte’s filings covering 2007 to 2025 — a span reaching back to the Vice President’s stints as Davao City vice mayor and mayor.
Prosecution counsel James Bryan Ibrahim Alih walked Batu through the declarations chronologically. In her earliest filings as Davao City vice mayor, Duterte reported P2,000,000 in both 2007 and 2008, then P2,800,000 in 2009. Her first mayoral term showed higher figures: P3,661,622 in 2010, P3,931,125.80 in 2011, and P4,320,532 in 2012. A second mayoral term produced declarations of P3,750,760 in 2016, P6,368,596 in 2017, and P3,795,000 in 2018.
The pattern broke with her third term as mayor. Batu confirmed that Duterte entered no cash figures for either 2019 or 2020. Asked to consolidate the years that followed to move the questioning along, she reviewed the court’s copies and stated: “For SALNs 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, wala pong nakadeclare na cash on hand or in bank” (For SALNs 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, there is no declaration of cash on hand or in bank).
Article II charges Duterte with failing to “fully and truthfully disclose all her and her spouse’s assets, liabilities, and net worth” in her SALNs for 2022, 2023, and 2024. Batu had flagged the same gaps once before, when she vouched for the documents during clarificatory hearings held by the House justice committee earlier this year — proceedings at which Duterte’s 2007 to 2024 SALNs were initially laid out.
The testimony built on ground laid a day earlier by Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang, the prosecution’s first witness, who told the court that as she reads the law, cash holdings must be entered as their own line in a SALN rather than folded into a filer’s other personal property.
