I wanted to know if the controversial BPI joint bank account of Rodrigo Roa Duterte and Sara Z. Duterte is still active because that account will play a crucial role in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
Last Monday, June 2, I went to a BPI branch and deposited P100 (not P500 as what my friend did on April 28, 2016 to disprove Duterte’s claim that the account was non-existent). It was accepted. Here’s the deposit slip. Proof that the account is still active.
On several occasions, former senator Antonio Trillanes IV gave the public a preview of the mind-boggling content of that BPI account, such as the deposits of Sammy Uy’s managers checks—ranging from P7 million to P10 million each — totaling almost P134 million in the name of Duterte and members of his family – Sara, Paolo, Sebastian and Cielito S. Avanceña, his long-time partner.
Sammy Uy was identified as a drug lord by self-confessed member of the Davao Death Squad, Arturo Lascañas.
There could be much more explosive information in the entries in more than 40 pages of BPI bank documents that Trillanes obtained and submitted to the Senate and to the office of the Ombudsman in 2017. The Duterte-appointed Ombudsman Samuel Martires, who is ending his seven-year term on July 27, effectively quashed any attempt to pursue the investigation of the plunder case Trillanes filed against Rodrigo and Sara Duterte based on the bank account transactions that amounted to P2.2 billion. The deposits were not reported in their respective Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth, as required by the law for government officials.
The former president harassed an official of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) he suspected as Trillanes’ source on the bank records. He also prohibited the council from releasing any information on the bank account to the Ombudsman.
In those documents, the bank account numbers of the source of the deposits are listed, but the identity of the account owners are not. The entries on March 28, 2014 are interesting and intriguing. That was the 69th birthday of Rodrigo Duterte, who was then mayor of Davao City. There were seven deposits totaling P193,705,615.88 on that day. The first was in the amount of P55,131,747.32, followed by P41,721,035.62. Then, four deposits in the amount of P20,000,000.00 each came in. The last deposit for the day was in the amount of P16,852,832.94.
The deposits could have been birthday gifts for the mayor, which is a violation of Republic Act No. 6713, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees.
A P20 million birthday check is staggering to a Filipino wage earner. But it is not an unusual story- wealthy businessmen giving the chief executive multi-million peso gifts for a mutually satisfactory business relationship. But who writes a birthday gift down to the last centavo, such as the P55,131,747.32 deposit? Is it payment for something? A dividend? What business were Duterte and his daughter running?
That bank account is Duterte’s Pandora’s Box. Once opened, it is expected to reveal anomalies more appalling than what the House Quadcom hearings have uncovered.
We will only know when the AMLC allows the scrutiny of that joint bank account because an impeachment case is one of the exceptions to the Bank Secrecy Law.
That is precisely the reason why the Dutertes are marshalling all their forces to block the impeachment trial. Their battle strategy is not to muster enough votes to block the conviction of the vice president but to PREVENT the convening of the impeachment court and the holding of the trial.
And they have no less than Senate President Chiz Escudero leading the maneuvers to frustrate the public’s desire for Sara Duterte to “address the impeachment charges, answer all allegations pertaining to corruption and clear her name” as conveyed in the May 2- 6 survey by the Social Weather Stations.
Sara Duterte has been charged with culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption, and other high crimes.
When it transmitted the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate last February, the House leadership said in a statement that the grounds for Duterte’s impeachment are a “series of grave allegations, including conspiracy to assassinate Marcos, large-scale corruption, abuse of public funds, and involvement in extrajudicial killings.”
Escudero’s sinister scheme has become too obvious. From his decision not to touch the Articles of Impeachment sent by the House of Representatives last February, and instead scheduled it to July, after the May elections, and postponing the presentation by the House prosecution panel of the impeachment articles from June 2 to June 11, he is trying to kill the impeachment trial.
Lawyer Barry Gutierrez’s post on X (formerly Twitter) expresses the disgust of many to what Escudero is doing. He said: “Chiz Escudero deliberately ran the clock out on the impeachment to ensure there would be no trial in the 19th Congress. And NOW they claim the impeachment can no longer carry over to the 20th Congress? Sinadya niyong magbagalbagalan tapos sasabihin nyo wala nang oras? Kalokohan. “
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
