OPPOSITION Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who exposed during the 2016 election campaign period President Rodrigo Duterte’s alleged ill-gotten wealth amounting to over P2 billion, welcomed Duterte’s statement to let the public scrutinize his bank accounts.
“Call! Although he would not show it to me as long as he would come out with it,” Trillanes said in a statement on Friday.
But Trillanes expressed apprehension over Duterte’s latest statement. He said on several occasions, Duterte had promised to make public his bank accounts to refute claims that he amassed unexplained wealth from 2006 to 2015 when he was Davao City mayor.
“But he already said that several times and he didn’t do it,” said Trillanes, a staunch Duterte critic.
If he really had no ill-gotten wealth, Trillanes said, he should come out with his bank accounts without conditions.
He renewed his challenge to Duterte to sign a waiver and show it to the public.
He has been insisting that the only way for Duterte to prove his innocence is to open his bank records. He even told the President and the public that if his allegation was not true, he would walk to prison and resign from the Senate.
Duterte has said he will allow the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission, which he created to run after corrupt appointees, to scrutinize his bank accounts. He also vowed to quit his post if it could be proven that his lifetime savings exceeded P40 million.
But Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said Trillanes would not be allowed to see the bank accounts.
The Office of the Ombudsman, then led by Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang, investigated the Duterte family’s bank transactions as a result of the plunder complaint filed by Trillanes.
However, the Ombudsman’s fact-finding probe was terminated on Nov. 29, 2017, because the Anti-Money Laundering Council did not submit any data pertaining to the bank accounts.
But to that, Duterte had said he would not cooperate with the Ombudsman’s probe into his alleged bank accounts which had hundreds of millions of pesos that he failed to disclose as required by law.
He said the allegations against him by the Ombudsman, which he called “lousy,” were “lies based on baseless” information.
“Waving fabricated evidence, lying to his teeth in front of the nation and then you want me to submit to the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman,” Duterte said alluding to Trillanes.
Carandang, who is leading the Ombudsman’s investigation into Duterte’s alleged ill-gotten wealth, said the President had some P1 billion in cash flow in his accounts.
Duterte told Carandang he will not submit to his jurisdiction because it was a lousy thing.
Duterte said his family had properties and businesses including an ice plant and lumberyard, adding his late father was a provincial governor.