[Pastilan] ‘Walang alam’

• Financial records presented at Vice President Sara Duterte's impeachment trial reveal a pattern of suspicious money movements, including P96 million that was obscured through manager's checks.
• The Dutertes reportedly held numerous bank accounts, with significant fluctuations in balances coinciding with Sara's resignation as education secretary, raising questions about their financial transparency.
• The case also involves potential national security concerns due to large sums of money from China linked to a company associated with Sara's husband, prompting calls for accountability and clarity.

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The financial records presented and validated by the Anti-Money Laundering Council and bank executives at Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial this week point to a pattern of money being moved, obscured, and kept out of plain sight.

The Dutertes, multi-millionaires after all, held tens of millions of pesos across a maze of accounts. At least P96 million was floated in financial limbo, shifted into manager’s checks and kept inside the bank while disappearing from customers’ accounts when their wealth had to be declared. The apparent purpose, as presented by prosecutors, was to keep the money out of sight during the filing of their mandatory statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.

Billions of pesos in transactions involving the Vice President and her husband were flagged as suspicious. There are millions more received from China by a company linked to them, given a semblance of legitimacy by purported supplies of banana chips, a rather crunchy explanation for a rather large sum.

If it is not unexplained wealth, as the Sara Duterte defense asserts and would have us believe, then what is the explanation?

Hocus-pocus

There’s something sinister about money that disappears without actually going anywhere. There’s no robbery the way bank robbers stage it, no getaway car, no maleta stuffed with cash. The money stays safely in the bank, but vanishes from the paperwork.

On Wednesday, October 7, prosecutors presented records showing about P96 million in manager’s checks linked to Duterte and her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte. The transactions point to a pattern in which substantial sums were kept from appearing in year-end balances.

Consider this: In January 2010, the father and daughter opened a joint time deposit at a BPI branch with more than P40 million. After 12 renewals, it had grown to P41.7 million. When the deposit matured in March 2011, the money was converted that same day into a manager’s check.

Except the money did not actually leave the bank. It moved into a settlement account separate from the customer’s account, where the bank held the funds backing an unused manager’s check.

If the check remained unused for six months, the amount could be returned to the purchaser’s account. Now, if that isn’t hocus-pocus, I don’t know what is.

The money could leave the customer’s account without leaving the bank, then return months later. Nothing really had to disappear in this modus. It only had to stop showing up on the radar, especially at year-end, when the money had to be declared.

Another P55 million was held through a similar manager’s check during the same period, bringing the total to about P96 million.

The defense says Sara Duterte did not know about the transactions because she did not sign them. Let me get this straight: her father could open a joint account, deposit and move P96 million around, and his daughter was simply out of the loop?

Really? P96 million and Sara, the daughter, had no idea?

The ‘walang alam’ defense

“Walang alam” (Has no knowledge) is now doing an extraordinary amount of work for the defense. Sara’s brother, Davao Mayor Baste Duterte, used it on the witness stand days ago. And Sara’s disbursing officer used it too.

If everyone involved is “walang alam,” then we have reached a remarkable situation. There are hundreds of millions of pesos, if not billions, mountains of paperwork and transactions recorded by banks and the AMLC, yet apparently none of them knows anything.

So who does?

The documents know. The numbers know. The banks know.

Apparently, everyone knows except the Dutertes.

30 bank accounts. Seriously?

The bank balances presented a day earlier, on Tuesday, October 6, offer another little arithmetic to think about.

Sara and her husband had at least 30 active accounts across several banks between 2022 and 2025. At year-end, those accounts held more than P59 million in 2022 and over P71 million in 2023. Then came 2024, when the total fell to about P22 million. In 2025, it climbed again, exceeding P35 million.

The sharp contraction came in 2024, the same year Sara resigned as education secretary. She quit in June that year, and her bank balances then took a conspicuous plunge.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But when the dates line up so neatly, calling it coincidence begins to sound less like an explanation and more like an alibi.

Who, exactly, needs 30 bank accounts? And how does someone end up with that many accounts, including joint accounts, without apparently knowing they exist?

Damage control

Tuesday, October 6, 2026, was a damage-control day for Sara.

As the Senate impeachment court tackled the financial evidence — something the Vice President’s lawyers and husband had desperately sought to prevent — Sara faced the cameras in Davao to attack allegations by former policeman Rodulfo Gracioso Jr., who claims he delivered cash to members of the Duterte family on instructions from a former House speaker.

Between Gracioso’s word and the financial records, the former is far easier to attack from a public relations perspective. A witness can be denied or discredited but financial records, backed by bank executives, are considerably harder to explain away.

The Davao press conference therefore offered a ready-made distraction, shifting public attention from bank documents and figures in the impeachment court to a familiar battle of accusations in the Southern Mindanao city.

China connection

With Cale88 Foods, the impeachment case moved beyond unexplained wealth and into questions of national security.

Records show Cale88, linked to Sara’s husband, received P319.3 million from China. Some transactions were flagged as suspicious, and a senator said some firms that dealt with Cale88 turned out to be Chinese state-owned.

China is hardly a politically neutral source of money. It rejects a ruling which upheld the Philippine territorial right while stubbornly asserting its claims, and it has been bullying our people.

Against the West Philippine Sea backdrop, Chinese-linked money flowing into a company associated with the husband of the sitting Vice President raises very, very serious questions.

Why was such money flowing into the company in the first place? Banana chips? And were the entities behind it advancing Chinese state interests? Who was paying whom, and why?

That deserves answers, not evasions.

Convince us, Madame Vice President, that you and your ilk are not Tsinadors — by your words, and more importantly, by your deeds. Pastilan. – Rappler.com