FOLLOWING President Rodrigo Duterte’s challenge to Congress to investigate his alleged ill-gotten wealth, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV will file a resolution today to ask the Senate to start the investigation.
Trillanes said his proposed resolution seeks to look into bank documents under the name of President Rodrigo Duterte and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio showing their undisclosed ‘‘covered transactions, or transactions exceeding P500,000.00, which might have violated the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
‘‘President Duterte must address this issue squarely once and for all and stop fooling the Filipino people, Trillanes said.
He said if the President had nothing to hide, he should bare it all and sign the waiver.
On the contrary, he said, the President had been dilly-dallying in his statements and instead had been bluffing the people by publicly ordering the AMLC to investigate his alleged bank accounts, although the AMLC would not do it unless he signed a waiver on bank secrecy.
‘‘And now, despite Duterte’s continued denial of the existence of his alleged undeclared wealth, he suspended Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melcor Carandang for supposedly releasing his bank documents from AMLC. What is there to leak when they deny such documents being released by AMLC? Trillanes said.
In the proposed resolution, Trillanes particularly noted the report made by Vera Files that Duterte and Davao Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio failed to fully disclose in their Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth their joint deposits and investments, which allegedly exceeded P100 million in the Bank of the Philippine Islands.
According to Vera Files’ report, the transactions in their bank accounts included a P48.17 million placement in 2006 that grew to P55.13 million by 2013; a P40.55-million investment in 2009 that stood at P41.72 million in 2013; about $220,000, roughly P10 million, from 2006 to 2012; the purchase of P80 million in insurance policies in 2014; and a P16.85-million investment which begun in 2014.
Trillanes first raised the issue of Duterte’s supposed ill-gotten wealth in April 2016 and filed a plunder complaint against him before the Ombudsman in the same year.
‘‘With this resolution, I am accepting President Duterte’s challenge to investigate his alleged ill-gotten wealth to once and for all reveal the truth on this issue,” Trillanes said.
“The public wants to know the truth and it’s in the hands of the Senate to uncover it.”