The Senate impeachment court handed the House prosecution a significant win on July 20, 2026, granting its request to open the bank and financial records of Vice President Sara Duterte and her husband, lawyer Manases “Mans” Carpio. But the ruling read by Presiding Officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero is more layered than a simple green light, and understanding its limits matters as much as understanding what it allows.
Here is what the court actually decided, why it decided that way, and what it does and does not mean for the case going forward.
What was granted
On the seventh day of the trial, the court approved two separate prosecution requests: one for the bank and Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) records of Duterte and Carpio, and a second for their tax records. The documents cover the years 2007 to 2025, and the banks were ordered to submit them to the court on July 30.
Escudero explained that the requested documents cleared the court’s tests for relevance and specificity. In his words, they were “reasonably described, readily identifiable, prima facie relevant and material to the allegations under Article II” — the article of impeachment that accuses Duterte of amassing unexplained wealth and failing to truthfully disclose her Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs).
The records tie back to earlier congressional testimony. During House hearings, AMLC officials said P6.77 billion in large and suspicious transactions moved through the couple’s accounts between 2006 and 2025 — far more than what Duterte reported in her SALNs. Whether that figure holds up under scrutiny is exactly what the prosecution now hopes the records will show.
Why the court sided with the prosecution
The defense had argued that the request was an illegal “fishing expedition” — an attempt to trawl through years of private financial data in search of evidence prosecutors did not yet have. Escudero rejected that framing on several grounds.
First, precedent. The presiding officer anchored his ruling in the 2012 impeachment trial of then-Chief Justice Renato Corona, when the Senate similarly ordered the examination of bank records. Bank secrecy, he noted, carries an explicit exception for impeachment proceedings.
Second, the marriage. Just before delivering the ruling, Escudero drew from defense counsel Michael Poa a confirmation that Duterte and Carpio married in 2007 without a prenuptial agreement. That places their assets under the default absolute community of property regime, meaning their finances are treated as a single, jointly owned mass. As Escudero put it, it is “a legal and mathematical impossibility to determine the respondent’s true net worth or lawful income without examining the bank accounts of her husband.”
Third, the AMLC confidentiality question. The defense leaned heavily on Section 8-A of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, calling it an absolute bar on disclosure. The court disagreed, ruling that the provision is meant to prevent unauthorized leaks by AMLC personnel and cannot override the subpoena power of the Senate sitting as an impeachment court. Escudero cited earlier rulings — Republic v. Sandiganbayan and Sabio v. Gordon — to underscore that confidentiality statutes cannot shield records from a lawful constitutional process. Prosecutor Chel Diokno made the same point more bluntly during interpellation, noting that the Sandiganbayan obtains AMLC records almost weekly. “Confidentiality cannot trump accountability,” he said.
The catch: what “granted” does not mean
This is where the ruling gets more complicated than the headlines suggest, and where the “win” comes with real limits.
The tax records are the clearest example. The court granted the subpoena for them, but Escudero also agreed with the defense that Section 71 of the Tax Code applies. Under that provision, tax records can be released only with presidential authorization, a request from a foreign tax authority, or a waiver from the taxpayer. Absent one of those, the court ruled it “shall not receive any subpoenaed records from the BIR.” In practical terms, the tax subpoena exists on paper but produces nothing unless President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. or Duterte herself unlocks it. Notably, the court had already returned the sealed box of Duterte’s tax records on the first day it convened, precisely because it lacked the order to hold them.
Several other guardrails apply to what was granted:
Only peso-denominated accounts are covered. Foreign currency deposits are excluded unless the depositors give written consent, a protection rooted in the Foreign Currency Deposit Act.
Two of the 21 listed corporate entities were dropped. The court denied subpoenas for JTC Group of Companies and Pikimong Pikimong Philippines Corporation, finding no prima facie link between those firms and either Duterte or Carpio. The “corporate veil,” the court said, cannot be pierced on suspicion alone. Subpoenas were granted for the remaining 19 corporations and one partnership.
The AMLC records go to Escudero first. Rather than entering the record openly, those documents will be privately reviewed by the presiding officer before any further use.
The older records serve a narrow purpose. Documents from 2007 to 2021 — spanning Duterte’s years as Davao City mayor and vice mayor, before she became vice president — may be used only to establish a “factual baseline” for measuring her wealth during her current term. They cannot be used to allege new impeachable offenses outside the existing articles. Escudero grounded that limit in Duterte v. House of Representatives, the same ruling the defense itself had invoked, and framed it as a protection of her due process rights.
Why this matters
Strip away the legal machinery and the ruling accomplishes one core thing: it gives prosecutors the evidentiary spine of their unexplained-wealth case. Article II lives or dies on the gap between what Duterte declared and what actually flowed through the family’s accounts. Without the records, that gap is an allegation. With them, it becomes something the senator-judges can weigh directly.
But the ruling is not a verdict, and the court was careful to say so. Granting the subpoena authorizes only the production of the documents. Their admissibility and evidentiary weight remain open questions that the prosecution must still argue. As Diokno told the senator-judges, the goal at this stage is narrow: “We just want to lay the evidence in front of you, for you to be the ones to say it.”
The tax-records limitation also plants a political flashpoint. Because the BIR files cannot move without a presidential waiver, attention now turns to whether Marcos — Duterte’s estranged running mate turned rival — will authorize their release. That decision, if it comes, would carry its own weight in a feud that has already reshaped Philippine politics.
The trial resumes with the prosecution building toward the other articles, but the July 30 deadline for the banks now looms as the next real test of whether the paper victory becomes a substantive one.
